Gizmorama - March 23, 2015

Good Morning,

A new study has shown that trying to consciously remember something causes another memory to actually weaken. So be sure to read about it and then, to be safe, completely forget about it.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Trying to remember something can make people forget something, study finds --*
CAMBRIDGE, England (UPI) - A new study finds that consciously trying to remember something forces another memory to weaken.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom had 24 participants intentionally associate certain words and images while in a brain scanner. By taking count of which associations they were able to recall over several stages of testing, they were able to demonstrate how certain memories remained and others weakened. They found trying to remember certain associations made other associations more difficult to recall.

"People are used to thinking of forgetting as something passive," said Dr. Michael Anderson from the University of Cambridge. "Our research reveals that people are more engaged than they realize in shaping what they remember of their lives. The idea that the very act of remembering can cause forgetting is surprising, and could tell us more about selective memory and even self-deception."

"Forgetting is often viewed as a negative thing, but of course, it can be incredibly useful when trying to overcome a negative memory from our past," said Dr. Maria Wimber from the University of Birmingham. "So there are opportunities for this to be applied in areas to really help people."

The study is published in Nature Neuroscience.


*-- Ancient whale fossil helps reveal birthplace of humanity --*
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UPI) - Prehistorians believe the transition from dense, elevated forest to flat, open grasslands in East Africa spurred humans' ancestors to first abandon all fours and walk upright. But when exactly did this happen? Researchers say a long lost beaked whale fossil may offer clues.

Though the beaked whale fossil in question is only just now making headlines, it was first discovered in Kenya in 1964. It was unearthed some 460 miles inland, suggesting the sea mammal had gotten lost and swam up a freshwater river system. But the 17-million-year-old fossil was originally misidentified as a turtle, and little analysis was conducted before it went missing.

It stayed lost in the archives of Harvard University for nearly 40 years, before Louis Jacobs -- who knew of its existence but for years failed to locate the fossil -- finally found the skull.

While the whale's journey inland is fascinating in itself, the fossil's rediscovery has offered much grander scientific revelations. The skull has helped researchers to date the East African plateau's uplift, and thus allowed scientists to more accurately pinpoint the place and time when human bipedalism first emerged.

"The whale is telling us all kinds of things," study co-author Louis Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told the Los Angeles Times. "It tells us the starting point for all that uplift that changed the climate that led to humans. It's amazing."

To date and measure the plateau's uplift, scientists used the original field notes to relocate the site of fossil's initial discovery. Next researchers looked at evidence of modern whales and dolphins who became lost upriver. Because they knew whales could only travel up a wide, low-gradient river, scientists were able to estimate the nature of the ancient waterway. Their analysis suggested the original site of whale's death (likely from exhaustion) couldn't have been more than 372 to 559 miles from the Indian Ocean and nor more than 78 to 121 feet high.

Today, that same spot is more than 2,000 feet above sea level, meaning uplifting forces from a plume of magma in the Earth's mantle has caused some 1,935 feet of rise in the 17 million years since the whale's fateful end.

"At the time when the whale stranded, it was assumed that there was a pan-African rainforest across the entire area," lead study author Henry Wichura, a geoscientist at the University of Potsdam, in Germany, told Australia's ABC Science.

Wichura is an expert on the plateau's uplift and ancient climate change in East Africa. But a more accurate date on the start of East Africa's uplifting suggests the transition from forest to grasslands began sooner than previously thought -- the climate change that first made walking on two feet advantageous.

"Even single specimens of organisms tell us a great deal about the history of the Earth, and they sometimes appear in surprising cases," Frank Brown, a geologist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "This is one such case."

The new study was published in the journal PNAS this week.

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