Plus: Fossils that fooled scientists for centuries, Bronze Age brain surgery, heart health, and more.
 
 

ON THE MENU

Good morning!

 

China’s Mars Rover got off to a propitious start in 2021, roving more than 1,000 m of the Utopia Planitia region and finding evidence of water. But, Zhurong never came out of hibernation in 2022 and hasn’t moved in months. Then again, it was only designed to last 3 months. So, read on about early brain surgery, speedy snaps, and heart health.

 
Fast Fact
 

QUICK BITE

Deer antlers dating back 2,000 years to the pre-Óc Eo culture of the Mekong River Delta were already museum worthy. A new analysis showing them to be musical instruments — chordophones — elevates them to amazing. The clue was a round hole at the end of an antler that would have anchored a string-holding peg. Chordophones were played by drawing a bow across the string, like a one-stringed violin but not quite as melodic as a Stradivarius.

 
Grab Bag
 

GRAB BAG

SNAPPING SHRIMP

Faster than a speeding bullet

Juvenile snapping shrimp can close their claws at lightning speed

Bigclaw snapping shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis) have earned a reputation for the bullet-speed snaps of their spring-loaded claws. The snaps shoot out superfast jets of water that form vapor-filled bubbles (cavitation bubbles). When the bubbles implode with a loud POP, the shock wave stuns competitors or predators. (See it in action HERE.)

 

Now, their kids have outdone them. In a recent study, researchers used high-speed videography to measure bigclaw juvenile snapping and found that juveniles accelerated their claws 20 times as fast as adults. Says study author Jacob Harrison, “I was completely ecstatic. This snapping shrimp was about the length of a staple, and it could move fast enough to cavitate water.” 

 

Preteen reliability was lower than adults, however, prompting researchers to wonder whether they were practicing cavitation and getting their muscles ready for adulthood, like middle school boys at the gym. “Juveniles may be practicing their strikes,” says Harrison.  Regardless, they’ve won the prize for the “fastest recorded acceleration for a repeatable, underwater motion.” 

 

ANCIENT HUMANS

Square hole in a round skull

Brain surgery dates back to the Bronze Age, according to new find

Two young adult brothers found buried together in Israel revealed ancient brain surgery. They died during the 15th century BC, and one had a square hole in his skull carved out at the juncture of intersecting lines — evidence of a surgical procedure called cranial trephination common elsewhere but not previously known from so early in the Near East.

 

The boys also had skeletal evidence of bone damage from disease, such as tuberculosis or leprosy that can make bones porose and lesioned. And they also showed congenital defects like an extra molar. The cranial trephination may have been an attempt to cure one of the brothers of health problems.

 

But cranial trephination was not a procedure done lightly. Points out study author Rachel Kalisher, “You have to be in a pretty dire place to have a hole cut in your head.” Also, such surgery would have been reserved for the wealthy. Corroborating their high status were the fine pottery buried with the brothers, who lived adjacent to a palace and may even have been royals. 

 

FUNKY FOSSILS

Seeing stars

Controversial "animal" fossil fooled scientists for more than a century

When famous Smithsonian paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott (famous kind of name, right?) found one of these fossils in 1896, he was excited about the ancient jellyfishes that he dubbed Brooksella sp., also known as "star cobbles" after their multi-armed shape. But his discovery of these pre-Cambrian organisms soon fired a controversy.

 

Since Walcott’s time, Brooksella fossils have been interpreted as sea sponges, worm burrows, or algae. Finally, a recent study throws cold water on the fire by presenting evidence from x-ray imaging that Brooksella was not any of these organisms. Its internal structure looks more like an inanimate silica formation of the type that form in the middle Cambrian rocks, with no sign of the canals or other internal features of a living animal. 

 

Says study author Sally Walker, "Brooksella intrigued me because, unlike most fossils, it had a 3D shape like a star-shaped puffed pastry that is unusual for soft-squishy animals like a sponge.” You’d expect a squishy animal to get squashed during the fossilization process and look more like a road-killed pastry. 

 
In The News
 

IN THE NEWS

  • Bisexual women face increased risk of heart disease, a new study says.

  • Another study finds that ifelong bachelors face the poorest prognosis when it comes to heart failure.

  • But now custom 3D-printed heart replicas that look and pump just like the real thing could help.

 
The Full Scope
 

THE FULL SCOPE

Heart health conjures up images of exercise routines, plant rich diets, and giving up our favorite bad habits like smoking, drinking, and munching on junk food while reclined on the couch, aka couch potato. But recent studies throw a curveball into the potato chip bag. 

 

First of all, a paper presented at a cardiology conference showed that men who have never been married are more than twice as likely to die shortly after a heart failure diagnosis than women, or than men who had been married. The results were based on following 94 participants with heart failure for about 5 years after their diagnosis. It’s not a huge sample size and the causes are not clear.

 

Maybe the unmarried men were spending more time doing the couch potato thing? Regardless, says lead author Katarina Leyba, "There is a relationship between a person's relationship status and their clinical prognosis [with heart failure], and it's important to figure out why that is.”

 

Odder still are the recent study findings that bisexual women have a higher risk of heart disease than heterosexual women. Heart health was scored using a decade of data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHNES), and the scores of bisexual women were about half as good as those of heterosexual women.

 

Digging into the disparity, researchers found that bisexual women smoked more and were more likely to be obese with high BMIs. Study authors conclude that “Investigators should conduct longitudinal research that examines social determinants that may explain the sexual identity differences observed in this study." Bisexual women, avoid hanging out with bachelor couch potatoes.

 

Regardless, engineers are on the job, working on a customizable robotic heart to stand in for the real one when needed. In the new study, the researchers propose a soft 3D-printed anatomical hydrodynamic system that mimics the unique dynamics of a patient’s heart. Scanning images of an individual’s heart are converted to 3-D models, which are then printed with polymer-based ink that is rubbery like heart muscle. A sleeve around the modeled left ventricle (pumping chamber) can be set to rhythmically squeeze it.

 

And the researchers found that the set-up effectively recreated the pressures and flows of a patient’s heart. Says study author Ellen Roche, "Being able to match the patients' flows and pressures was very encouraging. We're not only printing the heart's anatomy, but also replicating its mechanics and physiology.”

 

And, in the meantime, getting more sleep could help your heart perform better. Research recently presented at a cardiology conference found that people with better sleep habits lived longer. Explained study author Frank Qian, "We saw a clear dose-response relationship, so the more beneficial factors someone has in terms of having higher quality of sleep, they also have a stepwise lowering of all cause and cardiovascular mortality.”

 

Sleep well!

 
NerdSnack Picks
 

NERDSNACK PICKS

  • Airbag jeans for motorcyclists may look ridiculous, but they could also save your skin.
  • Shake it off! — A drone captured rare footage of a moose shedding both its antlers in a New Brunswick forest.
  • Wondering why 3D movies aren’t truly immersive? There’s a reason.

  • This short thread of mind-blowing “bug facts” has some eerie info.

 

COMING UP

Next time, we’ll explore how perceived beauty affects our brains — neuroaesthetics.

 

MEME OF THE WEEK

Written by Devin Reese, Edited by Jake Currie

 

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