Excerpt:

>The study was inspired by the Gough Map, the earliest surviving map of Great Britain, perhaps with its origins in the thirteenth century, which is held in the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

>The map depicts two islands in Cardigan Bay in west Wales, which no longer exist. Each of them is depicted about one quarter of the size of the island of Anglesey in north Wales. One is between Aberystwyth and Aberdovey and the other between there and Barmouth to the north.

> 

>The research was undertaken by Simon Haslett, Honorary Professor of Physical Geography at Swansea University and David Willis, Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford.

>Their study investigates historical sources and geological evidence from the coastline and the seabed.

>It proposes a model for how the coast has evolved since the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, which provides a possible explanation for the ‘lost’ islands.

>They suggest that the islands could be the remnants of a low-lying landscape underlain by soft glacial deposits laid down during the last ice age. Since then, forces of erosion have worn away the land, reducing it to islands, before these too were worn away and disappearing by the sixteenth century.

^Haslett, ^S. ^K., ^& ^Willis, ^D. ^(2022). ^The ^‘lost’ ^islands ^of ^Cardigan ^Bay, ^Wales, ^UK: ^insights ^into ^the ^post-glacial ^evolution ^of ^some ^Celtic ^coasts ^of ^northwest ^Europe. ^Atlantic ^Geoscience, ^58, ^131–146. ^https://doi.org/10.4138/atlgeo.2022.005

Excerpt:

>It is easy to forget the unprecedented nature of Trypillia megasites. During the 5th and 4th millennia BC in Eurasia, Trypillia megasites were unique in size and scale.

>Nowhere else on the planet in 4200 BC compared to the megasite of Vesely Kut, in south-central Ukraine, covering an area of 150 ha.

>While major parts of the megasite plans have been produced at Taljanki and Majdanetske, the Nebelivka Project has produced the only complete megasite plan so far, with a site area of 238 ha inside a shallow perimeter ditch.

>The characterization of the category ‘urban’ in the Trypillian context in general, and Nebelivka in particular, has nine constituents — the territory to which a site is central, site size, population numbers, population heterogeneity, the concentration of skilled labour and management, the built environment and formalized spaces with special functions, the scale of subsistence, the potential to be a node and re-distribution centre in a wide-reaching exchange network and the overall social structure.

> 

>The social, economic and personal implications of living on a small 4.5 ha and the rare >150 ha sites are so different that there was no possibility that the Nebelivka megasite was simply a very large example of a typical small rural settlement.

>It is only in the last 10 years that the significance of a certain class of sites has finally been recognized.

>In contrast to the classic high-density cities such as London, Paris and Berlin, low-density urban sites displayed variable population densities across their much larger area.

>Low-density urbanism was initially recognised by Roland Fletcher and is now an acknowledged alternative trajectory of urban development in most regions in the world.

Bisserka Gaydarska and John Chapman, 30 November 2020.

21 November 2022 19:03 UTC.

>US soccer journalist Grant Wahl says he was detained by security staff after he wore a rainbow shirt to USA’s World Cup opener against Wales.

>Wahl, who works for CBS Sports and writes a popular Substack column, wore the shirt as a show of solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community to the game at Qatar’s Ahmad bin Ali Stadium. Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar.

>However, he said a security guard told him the shirt was not allowed. Wahl said his phone was “forcibly ripped” from his hands by a guard as he tweeted about the incident.

>He said he was then detained for 25 minutes and told to remove his shirt, which a member of security staff said was “political”. He was also asked if he was from the UK.

>Wahl says he told a New York Times journalist who was passing by what had happened and he was detained too before being let go shortly afterwards.

>Wahl said he was subsequently allowed to wear the shirt in the stadium.

The Guardian

November 18, 2022.

Excerpt:

>After an extremely wet October, southeast Australia continued to see heavy rainfall in November 2022. With soils already saturated and dams full, the latest storms have added to ongoing flooding across New South Wales and Victoria.

>Widespread flooding is visible in this false-color image (right) acquired on November 18, 2022, with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

>Water appears light to dark blue. Vegetation is green and bare land is brown. For comparison, the MODIS image from the Aqua satellite (left) shows the same area on June 28, 2022, prior to the excessive rainfall.

> 

>Water that seeps deep into the soil can influence groundwater levels for months. The map above depicts shallow groundwater storage in Australia from November 11–14, 2022, as measured by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites.

>The colors depict the wetness percentile; that is, how the levels of groundwater compare to long-term records (1948–2012). Blue areas have more abundant water than usual, and orange and red areas have less.

>The extent to which such rainfall affects the groundwater level varies by location and depends on a range of factors such as soil type, aquifer depth, and vegetation. Time is also a factor, as rainfall accumulations from months past can influence current groundwater levels.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and GRACE data from the National Drought Mitigation Center. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Excerpt:

>Major players in the semiconductor supply chain in East Asia appear to be seeing it as inevitable for them to decouple with China in advanced industries involving sensitive technology, given concerns about the rapid pace of Beijing's military modernization.

>The United States is taking the lead in building a "Chip 4" alliance with Taiwan, South Korea and Japan for increased economic security over a possible global chip crunch in the event of a contingency between Taiwan and China.

> 

>Mariko Togashi, a research fellow for Japanese security and defense policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said in an interview that a complete decoupling with China is unlikely, but selective decoupling in certain areas involving sensitive technology, something like precision-guided strikes, will progress.

>Togashi said it is very costly -- and impossible in many cases -- to build a completely self-reliant supply chain, so like-minded nations must be included in the circle.

>Such efforts have been under way through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a U.S.-led initiative that seeks to build resilient supply chains in the Indo-Pacific.

>The 14-member IPEF, also involving Japan, Australia, South Korea and India -- but not China -- will start formal negotiations in December.

Takaki Tominaga for Kyodo, 20 November 2022 09:10 JST.

James Ashworth, 11 November 2022.

Excerpt:

>Structures found in 3.48-billion-year-old Australian rocks are the oldest evidence of life on Earth.

>Detailed analyses of geological samples from the Dresser Formation conclude that, despite previous scientific controversy, they represent fossils formed by early life and could provide hints of what scientists should look for on Mars.

> 

>Around 3.5 billion years ago, the area where Western Australia's Dresser Formation is now found would have featured shallow lagoons fed by water enriched in nutrients due to volcanism and hydrothermal activity.

>These lagoons are believed to have been inhabited by photosynthetic organisms, with the fossilised remains of the structures they formed preserved within the sedimentary rocks of the Dresser Formation.

> 

>On Mars, very similar habitats could have existed more than three billion years ago when the planet is considered to have been habitable.

>If life ever existed on Mars, it is possible that similar fossilised remains could be found.

>In a new study, published in the journal Geology, researchers examined samples from the Dresser Formation in greater detail than ever before.

>Not only do they add weight to arguments that these structures represent some of the earliest traces of life on this planet, but also provide a dry run of the process that will be performed on Martian rocks when they are returned to Earth.

Geology, DOI 10.1130/G50390.1

Excerpt:

>While animals also react to hearing noise, or might make rhythmic sounds, or be trained to respond to music, this isn’t the same as the complex neural and motor processes that work together to enable us to naturally recognize the beat in a song, respond to it or even predict it. This is referred to as beat synchronicity.

>Only relatively recently, research studies (and home videos) have shown that some animals seem to share our urge to move to the groove.

>A new paper by a team at the University of Tokyo provides evidence that rats are one of them.

>“Rats displayed innate — that is, without any training or prior exposure to music — beat synchronization most distinctly within 120-140 bpm (beats per minute), to which humans also exhibit the clearest beat synchronization,” explained Associate Professor Hirokazu Takahashi from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology.

>“The auditory cortex, the region of our brain that processes sound, was also tuned to 120-140 bpm, which we were able to explain using our mathematical model of brain adaptation.”

>Although the main study focused on responses to K. 448 by Mozart, four other musical pieces were also played to the human and animal participants: Born This Way by Lady Gaga, Another One Bites the Dust by Queen, Beat It by Michael Jackson and Sugar by Maroon 5.

Science Advances, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abo7019

>mechadracula

>"Martin Bizzarro" is a supervillain name if I've ever heard one.

Further reading:

>Martin Bizzarro

>Professor

>Centre for Star and Planet Formation

>My research is focused on understanding the earliest evolution of our solar system through the use of high-precision isotope ratio measurements in extraterrestrial materials. I am currently director of the Center for Star and Planet Formation (www.starplan.dk), a multidisciplinary centre of excellence for research in cosmochemistry, astrophysics and astronomy located at the Natural National History Museum of Denmark.

Source: https://globe.ku.dk/staff-list/?pure=en/persons/283253

Jacklin Kwan, 16 November 2022.

Excerpt:

>Martin Bizzarro at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and his colleagues have analysed the concentration of a rare chromium isotope, known as chromium-54, in samples of meteorites that have come to Earth from Mars to estimate how much water was deposited on the Red Planet by asteroids.

>“It’s a bit like DNA,” says Bizzarro. “Carbonaceous-type asteroids have a very distinct chromium isotope composition relative to the inner solar system.”

> 

>If the original bombarding asteroids were just 10 per cent water, the lower limit for C-type meteorites, they would have deposited enough of the molecule to create a global ocean, say the researchers. If spread out over the whole planet, the water would form a layer 300 metres deep.

>“I think this is the first time where we have a smoking gun,” says Bizzarro, and we can finally say with certainty that water-rich asteroids hit Mars’s surface.

>C-type asteroids also contain elements that are essential to life.

>This means that two of the most important ingredients necessary to life – organic molecules and water – were present on Mars during a time before Earth’s moon even formed, say the researchers.

Science Advances, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abp8415