The Woodpecker's Strong Head

Banging you head against the wall is not to be recommended because it sort of hurts. Yet the woodpecker does it every day and seems content and happy. Woodpeckers are able to peck at a tree trunk at a high speed (6-7 meters per second), resulting in intense deceleration forces upon impact, without sustaining any brain injury. Why precisely this can be done without injury was investigated by Yubo Fan of Beihang University in Beijing and Ming Zhang of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The results may lead to better ways to prevent head injuries in humans.

 The woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks are a family, Picidae, of near-passerine birds. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia and New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. Most species live in forests or woodland habitats, although a few species are known to live in treeless areas such as rocky hillsides and deserts.

It is still not known how woodpeckers protect their brain from impact injury. In order to investigate this, two synchronous high-speed video systems were used to observe the pecking process, and the force sensor was used to measure the peck force. 

The mechanical properties and macro/micro morphological structure in woodpecker's head were investigated using a mechanical testing system and micro-CT scanning. Models of the woodpecker's head were established to study the dynamic intracranial responses.

The result showed that macro/micro morphology of cranial bone and beak can be recognized as a major contributor to non-impact-injuries. The results showed that specific details of the cranial bones and beak, such as the relative "spongy"-ness of the bone at different places in the skull and the unequal lengths of the upper and lower parts of the beak, were crucial for preventing impact injuries.

By study of the woodpecker better means to protect human heads may be devised such as better hard hats, biker helmets and similar.

by "environment clean generations"

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Posted in: australia,biology,bones,environment clean generations,head,injuries,madagascar,tree,woodpecker

Oldest Fossils 3.4-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation in Australia

    Oldest Fossils This cluster of cells is one example of the spheroidal and ellipsoidal microfossils found at the 3.4-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia. David Wacey/University of Western Australia

 

Clusters of islands poked through hot oceans 3.4 billion years ago, when the world still had no oxygen and the seas churned under a pallid, overcast sky. But life thrived on Earth even then, scientists say — and now they have the world’s oldest fossils to prove it. 

There were no plants or algae to photosynthesize and produce oxygen, so microbial life used sulfur for energy and growth, researchers say. Microfossils of these earliest microbes extend the sandstone record of life on Earth by about 300 million years.

“This ability to essentially ‘breathe’ sulfur compounds has long been thought to be one of the earliest stages in the transition from a non-biological to biological world,” said David Wacey, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia who led the study.

Sulfur-based bacteria exist today, in places like hydrothermal vents and hot springs. And early Archaean rocks have shown evidence for ancient sulfur-based metabolism as early as 3.5 billion years ago, but fossils of these sulfur-based life forms have been difficult to find and even more difficult to verify. Now researchers at UWA and the University of Oxford believe their newest find passes the test.

The fossils consist of carbonaceous cells and the protective sheaths that housed them. They were found in the Strelley Pool Formation, an outcropping of sedimentary rocks in a remote field in western Australia that represents the oldest shoreline on the planet. The fossils were well-preserved between the quartz sand grains of the ancient beach, the researchers say.

The fossils resemble other, well-studied microfossils from 2 billion years ago, the researchers say. They were found clustered in groups, stuck to sand grains in appropriate habitats, and they were even found with pyrite (fool’s gold), which may be byproducts of their sulfur metabolism.

    The Strelley Pool Formation

Researchers used Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and geochemical analysis to show the fossils indeed contain carbon-based material and that it was not the result of some later contamination. Writing in this week’s edition of Nature Geoscience, they acknowledge it is notoriously difficult to prove the biological nature of putative Archaean-era fossils — but they have several pieces of evidence in this case, including the fossils’ mineralogy and morphology.

Incidentally, the same Oxford team has studied other ancient fossils from a site 20 miles away and considered them not good enough. Those fossils, from the Apex chert in Australia, didn’t have the right mineralogy and shapes for them to be of biological origin, according to an Oxford news release about the Strelley Pool fossils. But these fossils do.

The researchers are now re-examining other fossils using the same methods, trying to determine if they also might contain evidence for life.

And, they say, they’re thinking about the implications this study may have on astrobiology. If life does exist — or did exist — elsewhere in the solar system, it might look something like this. The researchers’ careful evidence tests could be used to figure it out.

“Could these sorts of things exist on Mars? It’s just about conceivable,” said Martin Brasier, a professor of paleobiology at Oxford. “But it would need these approaches – mapping the chemistry of any microfossils in fine detail and convincing three-dimensional images – to support any evidence for life on Mars.”

 Microfossils of Sulfur-Metabolizing Bacteria: The fossil cells were found clustered in groups and attached to sand grains. The middle cell in this image has a ruptured wall.  David Wacey/University of Western Australia

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Posted in: australia,formation,fossils,old,pool,strelley,university

Antarctic In Military Plans

Australia is being urged to be ready to defend its claim to Antarctic territory in its military planning, given inevitable global competition for the continent's rich energy resources.

Antarctica is thought to have the world's third-largest oil reserves, locked away by an international treaty that preserves the territory from exploitation.

             However, a Lowy Institute report released today warns that other countries are eyeing the abundant energy reserves as technology makes it easier to access the frozen continent.

             The big oil companies are working on ways of extracting energy resources from polar regions. Last week US regulators approved plans by Royal Dutch Shell to explore in waters off Alaska.

Australia claims 42 per cent of Antarctica, a claim that is not recognised internationally. The Lowy report warns that the government must stop thinking of Antarctica as a scientific playground and treat it as a national security issue.

               It calls for military personnel to take part in ''peaceful and scientific roles'' in operations in Antarctica and to hand responsibility for the territory to the Attorney General's department, with a strong national security focus.

The international treaty covering the Antarctic expires in 2048 but the report warns Australia is lagging behind other countries that are already working to bolster their claims.

               ''China is investing in a new ice-breaker ship, ski-equipped planes and helicopters as well as extensive Antarctic astronomy and astrophysics, and is refurbishing its stations for year-round occupation,'' the report says.

             

                The report - written by an officer on leave from the Prime Minister's department, Ellie Fogarty - also criticises transport both to and from, and within, the continent.

 

                 The government's recent $46 million investment in an ice runway at Wilkins airfield was largely wasted because of a lack of aircraft equipped to land on ice, the report says, and it also recommends the purchase of a new ice-breaker.

by "environment clean generations"

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Posted in: antarctica,australia,military