My Science School

In late 2015, scientist announced the discovery of a new species of human ancestor – the Homo naledi. The species had a tiny brain and ape-like shoulders for climbing. However, in many ways, it looks similar to humans. Fossils of the creature were found in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind cave system.

Further studies showed that the Homo naledi was relatively young, living at least between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago.

The unearthed fossils were from at least 15 individuals and include multiple examples of most of the bones in the skeleton. Based on this wide range of specimens from a single site, Berger et al. describe Homo naledi as being similar in size and weight to a small modern human, with human-like hands and feet. Furthermore, while the skull had several unique features, it had a small braincase that was most similar in size to other early hominin species that lived between four million and two million years ago. Homo naledi's ribcage, shoulders and pelvis also more closely resembled those of earlier hominin species than those of modern humans.

The Homo naledi fossils are the largest collection of a single species of hominin that has been discovered in Africa so far and, in a related study, Dirks et al. describe the setting and context for these fossils. However, since the age of the fossils remains unclear, one of the next challenges will be to date the remains to provide more information about the early evolution of humans and their close relatives.

 

Picture Credit : Google

West Africa witnessed one of the worst Ebola outbreaks ever in 2014. The virus deeply affected communities in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Public were informed about the outbreak in Guinea in March 2014, and by December 2014, the virus infected more than 17,000 people and killed 6,000.

In 2015, Ervebo, an experiential vaccine for Ebola was tested among volunteers and showed promising results. In December 2016, a study published in The Lancet revealed that the experiential vaccine proved to be 100% effective against Ebola. In 2019, Merck, the company that created the Ervebo vaccine, received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

The Ebola virus was relatively unknown in West Africa, so it infected and killed people for months before being identified. It was the first Ebola outbreak to spread unchecked through urban areas — the capital cities of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The outbreak was traced back to a 2-year-old child infected in Guinea in December 2013, three months before the outbreak was declared.

The infection spread rapidly where infected people were cared for at home or died at home and their bodies were washed and prepared for burial by family members, according to tradition.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In December 2014, Google unveiled its first prototype of a fully-functional self-driving car. The prototype combined self-driving technology, such as laser-guided steering, with car parts from conventional suppliers. Google also said that it was not interested in manufacturing the car and was looking out for partners. The prototype is yet to hit the market.

The original plan was to create a car that was completely driverless, but California introduced some new rules this year that stipulated that test cars must also have manual controls (steering, pedals) so that a human driver can take over if needed. If all goes to plan, Google hopes to partner with a real car maker to bring a self-driving vehicle to market in the next five years. Whether the commercialized driverless car will look like the overly cutesy Google prototype remains to be seen.

For the last few years, Google’s self-driving efforts have been focused on retrofitting existing cars (primarily the Toyota Prius and Lexus 450h) with the necessary hardware and software to autonomously drive a few towns and highways in California and Nevada. Now, after hundreds of thousands of accident-free miles, Google is confident enough in its self-driving tech that it’s taking the next steps towards commercialization. In May it unveiled a semi-functioning prototype (and a very cute promotional video, which is embedded below), and today it is unveiling a completed, fully functioning prototype that is road-legal.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The Xbox One, the third console in the Xbox series was announced and released in 2013. Developed by Microsoft, this is the first Xbox gaming console to be released in China.

Xbox One proved controversial for its original digital rights management and privacy practices; while Microsoft touted the ability for users to access their library of games (regardless of whether they were purchased physically or digitally) on any Xbox One console without needing their discs, and the ability to share their entire library with 10 designated "family" members, all games would have to be tied to the user's Xbox Live account and their Xbox One console, and the console would be required to connect to the Internet on a periodic basis (at least once every 24 hours) to synchronize the library, or else the console would be unable to play any games at all. After an overwhelmingly negative response from critics and consumers (who also showed concerns that the system could prevent or hinder the resale of used games), Microsoft announced that these restrictions would be dropped. Microsoft was also criticized for requiring the Xbox One to have its updated Kinect peripheral plugged in to function, which critics and privacy advocates believed could be used as a surveillance device. As a gesture toward showing a commitment to user privacy, Microsoft decided to allow the console to function without Kinect.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In August 2013, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and The Boring Company, and chief executive of Tesla, Inc, released his concept for a transportation system called the Hyerloop. The Hyperloop is a solar-powered, earthquake-resistant, pod-based transportation system. This fast-speed transportation system can cut down travel time between places by several hours. In the following years, several countries have shown interest in the Hyperloop system.

On the west coast, the strip between San Francisco and Los Angeles is one of the most traveled corridors in the state. Currently, people can cover this distance by road, air, or railway. Roads and railways tend to be slow, while a flight, though fast, tends to be expensive. Musk’s Hyperloop system would cover the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes and cost a proposed $20 per ride. 

The Hyperloop would consist of capsules transported at high speeds through the length of low-pressure tubes that are elevated off the ground. To simplify the science, reports suggest the pods would work similarly to an air hockey table. The capsules are supported on a cushion of air and travel at average speeds of 600 mph, reaching a top speed of 760 mph.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In 2013, Oregon Health and Science University researchers announced that they had successfully cloned human embryos and collected stem cells from them. As the first step towards using them in transplant medicine, the team also grew the cells into specialized heart and skin cells.

Stem cells are primitive, unspecialized cells. A 5-day-old human embryo, called a blastocyst, contains an inner cell mass composed of about 12 embryonic stem cells.

Adult human bodies contain relatively few stem cells, mostly concentrated in the bone marrow.

Stem cells’ value to researchers is that they can be induced into becoming specific tissue or organ cells. 

The cloning procedure works by combining a patient's body cell with an unfertilized egg cell from a donor.

The patient's skin cell is inserted into the outer membrane of the egg cell and chemically induced to begin developing into a blastocyst.

In the blastocyst, embryonic cells divide, producing a mass of stem cells.

The stem cells can be induced to differentiate into different types of cells as needed (heart, nerve, muscle, etc.). These cells are genetically identical to the patient's own cells (that is, they are cloned).

In the future, the cloned cells could be transplanted into the patient to replace damaged cells.

 

Picture Credit : Google

One of the most anticipated discoveries in Physics was made in2013 when scientists at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) detected a particle which had characteristics similar to the Higgs Boson. The Higgs Boson is a component of the Higgs field, an invisible field responsible for the mass of all the matter in the universe. Sometimes referred to as the ‘God Particle’ in popular culture, the discovery of this particle helps scientist better understand the functioning of our universe. In 2013, Peter Higgs and Francois Englert, two physicists involved in the finding of the particle were awarded the Noble Prize in Physics for their theoretical predictions.

The hypothesised Higgs mechanism made several accurate predictions, however to confirm its existence there was an extensive search for a matching particle associated with it – the "Higgs boson". Detecting Higgs bosons was difficult due to the energy required to produce them and their very rare production even if the energy is sufficient. It was therefore several decades before the first evidence of the Higgs boson was found. Particle colliders, detectors, and computers capable of looking for Higgs bosons took more than 30 years to develop.

By March 2013, the existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed, and therefore, the concept of some type of Higgs field throughout space is strongly supported. The nature and properties of this field are now being investigated further, using more data collected at the LHC.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In early 2012, the Internet, including tech companies and users, stood united and protested against the stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), both anti-piracy laws tabled by the United States government. According to these laws, access to sites with pirated content was to be restricted, including search engines and advertising companies that work with them. In protest, On January 18, websites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Craigslist went dark. Google also put a black censorship box over its logo. Petitions and organized boycotts were also held. As a result, both SOPA and PIPA were shelved by the government.

This is all because of two pieces of legislation: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and its Senate companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).  The purpose of these bills is to make it harder for sites -- especially those located outside the United States -- to sell or distribute pirated copyrighted material such as movies and music as well as physical goods such as counterfeit purses and watches. Even most of SOPA and PIPA's strongest opponents applaud the intentions of the legislation while deploring what it might actually accomplish.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Two baby teeth found in the Grotta del Cavallo, Apulia, Italy and a jawbone fragment found in Kents Cavern, Devon, England pushed back the dates of arrival of modern humans in Europe by 5,000 years. The teeth and jawbone were dated to be 45,000 and 41,000 years old respectively. Previously, it was thought that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

Early Eurasian Homo sapiens fossils have been found in Israel and Greece, dated to 194,000–177,000 and 210,000 years old respectively. These fossils seem to represent failed dispersal attempts by early Homo sapiens, who were likely replaced by local Neanderthal populations.

The migrating modern human populations are known to have interbred with local varieties of archaic humans, so that contemporary human populations are descended in small part (below 10% contribution) from regional varieties of archaic humans.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Apple launched its virtual assistant Siri with the iPhone 4s in October 2011. Siri, powered by Artificial intelligence, was one of the first virtual assistants for smartphones. Siri could fix appointments, call people and even answer your questions. After Siri began capturing the market, several virtual assistants were brought out in the decade. Among them were Amazon’s Alexa, launched in November 2014 and Google Assistant by Google, launched in May 2016.

Siri understands context allowing you to speak naturally when you ask it questions, for example, if you ask “Will I need an umbrella this weekend?” it understands you are looking for a weather forecast. Siri is also smart about using the personal information you allow it to access, for example, if you tell Siri “Remind me to call Mom when I get home” it can find “Mom” in your address book, or ask Siri “What’s the traffic like around here?” and it can figure out where “here” is based on your current location. Siri helps you make calls, send text messages or email, schedule meetings and reminders, make notes, search the Internet, find local businesses, get directions and more. You can also get answers, find facts and even perform complex calculations just by asking.

 

Picture Credit : Google

 

 

For the first time ever, scientists decoded the full-body colour patterns of a dinosaur after they discovered fossilized pigments. In January 2010, an analysis of melanosomes – organelles that contain pigments – in the fossilized feathers of Sinosauropteryx, a dinosaur that lived in China some 120 to 125 million years ago, revealed that the creature had reddish-brown tones and white stripes along its tail. A little later, a full-body reconstruction revealed that Anchiornis, a small, feathered-dinosaur, which lived about 150 million years ago, had black and white feathers on its body and red feathers on its head.

Even as the hundred-million-year-old bird melanosomes were being announced in 2008, the team behind the January 2010 report was using a scanning electron microscope to study minute details of feathered birds and dinosaurs found in Liaoning Province, China, a region famous for yielding thousands of exquisitely preserved animals that lived between 131 and 120 million years ago (prehistoric time line).

The Liaoning project put the team in a unique position to attempt the first melanosome discovery in dinosaurs.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The gram or insta, as it is popularly known today, was launched on October 6, 2010, by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The photo and video-sharing platform quickly took the social media world by storm over the next few years, touching one billion active users in 2018! One of the most influential social media platforms, Instagram was bought by Facebook in 2012.

Systrom was working in marketing and started doing engineering at night to help him learn how to code. He created a prototype app of an idea he originally called Burbn, which allowed people to check-in where they are on their mobile web app. After meeting people who worked for venture capitalist firms at a party, Systrom got them to agree to a meeting to discuss Burbn. After the first meeting, he quit his job and two weeks later he had raised $500,000 from the firms.

At this point, Systrom decided to find a team to help him and Mike Krieger agreed to join. They decided that the app was very similar to other already established mobile apps, so they pivoted to focus solely on communication through images. They stripped out all the features from the app except uploading photos, commenting and liking. It was renamed Instagram which referred to the fact that users were sending a type of instant telegram.

 

Picture Credit : Google