Paleontologists: birds learned to fly at least 125 million years ago

Scientists have discovered that the ancient ancestors of birds learned to fly quite a long time - at least 125 million years ago. Previously, the researchers were not sure that a very primitive structure of ancient birds allowing them to rise into the air. More information about the results of the work can be found in the journal Scientific Reports.

The first ancestors of modern birds - archeopteryx - appeared on the planet about 150 million years ago, and they have been found in present-day Germany. Archaeopteryx dimensions do not exceed the size of a crow, and the structure of his body resembled reptiles. The primitive compared to modern birds wing structure makes scientists to doubt whether Archaeopteryx was capable of full flight.

The researchers studied unusually well-preserved wing of an ancient bird that lived on Earth about 125 million years ago. As a result of paleontologists concluded that despite the fact that the skeleton of a bird after all different from the present, the location and strength of the muscles demonstrate the ability of flying creatures. Moreover, according to the authors, made a bird just as its counterparts living today.

Most worker ants appeared inveterate idlers and loafers

Ants, like the bees, for a long time there was a special reputation workaholic working very hard feet. But this pattern has in common with the reality of more than cunning foxes or hedgehogs love to apples. According to a new study, the majority of working individuals in the anthill can stay idle.

Observations were made on small brown ants Temnothorax rugatulus, inhabit coniferous forests of North America. Like many other ants, their working individuals have particular specialty: some are busy in construction, others - exploration and production of food, others take care of the offspring. However, judging by the results of the biologists in Arizona, most working individuals "specialize" to doing nothing.

In the laboratory, the scientists looked at the behavior of a few hundred ants from five different colonies using colored tags to track their movements. Within two weeks, the camera takes an event six times a day, making the recording time of five minutes. The authors then analyzed the data, follow the movements (or lack of movement) in some individuals. So they found that among worker ants 71.9% does not occupied at least half the time, and 25.1% and did never managed to catch for some productive work. Only a small percentage of insects - 2.6% of working individuals - worked constantly, as it should be ants.

Previously, scientists had thought about the fact that the ants are not nearly as hard-working, as is commonly believed. This is attributed to the fact that the activity in the anthill can be distributed throughout the day between the plurality of insects, working "in shifts", due to the displacement of some of their circadian rhythms and daily activity. However, according to new data, lazy individuals remain permanently inactive. The authors suggest that the total laziness may be associated with age, individuals are too young to work or it's too old and "retired." However, there are other hypotheses, "lazy" individuals may be in standby, saving power in case of special need. Their behavior may have some other, yet unknown to us function.

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Blue Parrot fish

                 De Brazza's Monkey

                               Sad tapir

                  The smallest particle


In summer, a team of researchers working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), said that opened the Higgs boson, which is called the "God particle." The Higgs boson - is the last missing piece in the Standard Model - the generally accepted theory today about the structure of the universe.

The so-called God particle was predicted in 1960 by the English physicist Peter Higgs to explain why some particles such as quarks, electrons and protons have have mass, while other particles, such as photons - are not.

It has long been desired particle can complete the standard model of physics, explaining why the objects in our universe have mass, and hence why the galaxies, planets and even people have a right to exist. According to the theory, when the universe began to cool after the Big Bang, the hypothetical force was formed, known as the Higgs field, together with its quantum - eponymous boson.
This field permeates the entire universe, explains the emergence of the mass of the particles that formed the atoms. Without him, the existence of particles just floated in space to the speed of light. It is known that particles having a mass accelerated to the speed of light can not. The weight they gain just as contact with the Higgs field.

Since the "catch" the Higgs boson is not possible, then the only way to confirm today its existence - is to collect and analyze a large amount of information about the collisions of elementary particles and reveal special "stereotype of splitting", which can be accompanied by nothing but "God particle." That is what the scientists working on the LHC.

These sets of similar experiments on the LHC detectors were submitted to two independent groups of scientists from the CMS and ATLAS. At first the result of a bit has not held up to the level of scientific discoveries from the second opening took place.

"We are seeing a new boson with a mass of about 125 GeV. CMS detector" sees "a new particle - the level of statistical significance of the signal in the individual channels the search exceeded the required five standard deviations," - said the representative of the group CMS Joe Incandela.

He noted that the statistical significance of the combined results of searches in all five channels is 4.9 sigma - 0.1 sigma less than the opening level. In this case, two of the five channels search particles exceeds the statistical significance level is 5 sigma. In the ATLAS GROUP saw "clear evidence of the existence of a new particle, with a significance level of 5 sigma (which corresponds to the opening level), with a mass of about 126 GeV."

Large Hadron Collider built a 100-meter depth under the border of France and Switzerland. It is a 27-kilometer circular tunnel, which is set particle accelerator in the form of a giant pipe. Studies in the LHC in opposite directions run beams of protons that are accelerated to very high speeds, close to the light, and then a part of them collide with each other, resulting in the need to be born and new elementary particles.


In September 2011 the first group of experimental physicists announced that neutrinos sent from the CERN laboratory near Geneva to an underground Italian laboratory Gran Sasso at a distance of 732 km, arrive at the detector 60 nanoseconds earlier than the flow of light in a vacuum at the same distance . This was contrary to the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein, but in February 2012 the experts from the Gran Sasso acknowledged that the error indicators affected devices.

           The most little cat in the world


  Cats accompanying person over 10, 000 years, became not only an object of universal admiration, but also the subject of the work of breeders. Now think for a moment! The planet is home to over 100 officially registered species, which are divided into more than 700 subspecies, excluding "mongrels" and the number-tailed striped than 600 million individuals. And among this world, there is only one, the smallest breed of cat in the world - Toy-Bob.

The size of adult cats can be compared with the size of 5-month-old kitten, weighs less than 2.5 kg. Not knowing what to you Toy-Bob, looking at the photos, you can decide what is the Siamese kitten born without a tail, as the Bobtail. The peculiarity of the breed - huge child-open eyes and "exclusive" shape of the tail, which is a feature of each individual representative of the breed.