For nearly 650 years, the fortress walls in the Chinese city of Xi’an have served as a formidable barrier around the central city. At 12 meters high and up to 18 meters thick, they are impervious to almost everything — except subatomic particles called muons.
Now, thanks to their penetrating abilities, muons may be key to ensuring that the walls that once protected the treasures of the first Ming Dynasty — and are now a national architectural treasure in their own right — stand for centuries more.
A refined detection method has provided the highest-resolution muon scans yet produced of any archaeological structure, researchers report in the Jan. 7 Journal of Applied Physics. The scans revealed interior density fluctuations as small as a meter across inside one section of the Xi’an ramparts. The fluctuations could be signs of dangerous flaws or “hidden structures archaeologically interesting for discovery and investigation,” says nuclear physicist Zhiyi Liu of Lanzhou University in China. Muons are like electrons, only heavier. They rain down all over the planet, produced when charged particles called cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Although muons can travel deep into earth and stone, they are scattered or absorbed depending on the material they encounter. Counting the ones that pass through makes them useful for studying volcano interiors, scanning pyramids for hidden chambers and even searching for contraband stashed in containers impervious to X-rays (SN: 4/22/22).
Though muons stream down continuously, their numbers are small enough that the researchers had to deploy six detectors for a week at a time to collect enough data for 3-D scans of the rampart.
It’s now up to conservationists to determine how to address any density fluctuations that might indicate dangerous flaws, or historical surprises, inside the Xi’an walls.
Today’s red jungle fowl — the wild forebears of the domesticated chicken — are becoming more chickenlike. New research suggests that a large proportion of the wild fowl’s DNA has been inherited from chickens, and relatively recently.
Ongoing interbreeding between the two birds may threaten wild jungle fowl populations’ future, and even hobble humans’ ability to breed better chickens, researchers report January 19 in PLOS Genetics.
Red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) are forest birds native to Southeast Asia and parts of South Asia. Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated the fowl, possibly in the region’s rice fields (SN: 6/6/22). “Chickens are arguably the most important domestic animal on Earth,” says Frank Rheindt, an evolutionary biologist at the National University of Singapore. He points to their global ubiquity and abundance. Chicken is also one of the cheapest sources of animal protein that humans have.
Domesticated chickens (G. gallus domesticus) were known to be interbreeding with jungle fowl near human settlements in Southeast Asia. Given the unknown impacts on jungle fowl and the importance of chickens to humankind, Rheindt and his team wanted to gather more details. Wild jungle fowl contain a store of genetic diversity that could serve as a crucial resource for breeding chickens resistant to diseases or other threats.
The researchers analyzed and compared the genomes — the full complement of an organism’s DNA — of 63 jungle fowl and 51 chickens from across Southeast Asia. Some of the jungle fowl samples came from museum specimens collected from 1874 through 1939, letting the team see how the genetic makeup of jungle fowl has changed over time.
Over the last century or so, wild jungle fowl’s genomes have become increasingly similar to chickens’. Between about 20 and 50 percent of the genomes of modern jungle fowl originated in chickens, the team found. In contrast, many of the roughly 100-year-old jungle fowl had a chicken-ancestry share in the range of a few percent.
The rapid change probably comes from human communities expanding into the region’s wilderness, Rheindt says. Most modern jungle fowl live in close vicinity to humans’ free-ranging chickens, with which they frequently interbreed.
Such interbreeding has become “almost the norm now” for any globally domesticated species, Rheindt says, such as dogs hybridizing with wolves and house cats crossing with wildcats. Pigs, meanwhile, are mixing with wild boars and ferrets with polecats. Wild populations that interbreed with their domesticated counterparts could pick up physical or behavioral traits that change how the hybrids function in their ecosystem, says Claudio Quilodrán, a conservation geneticist at the University of Geneva not involved with this research.
The effect is likely to be negative, Quilodrán says, since some of the traits coming into the wild population have been honed for human uses, not for survival in the local environment.
Wild jungle fowl have lost their genetic diversity as they’ve interbred too. The birds’ heterozygosity — a measure of a population’s genetic diversity — is now just a tenth of what it was a century ago.
“This result is initially counterintuitive,” Rheindt says. “If you mix one population with another, you would generally expect a higher genetic diversity.”
But domesticated chickens have such low genetic diversity that certain versions of jungle fowl genes are being swept out of the population by a tsunami of genetic homogeneity. The whittling down of these animals’ genetic toolkit may leave them vulnerable to conservation threats.
“Having lots of genetic diversity within a species increases the chance that certain individuals contain the genetic background to adapt to a varied range of different environmental changes and diseases,” says Graham Etherington, a computational biologist at the Earlham Institute in Norwich, England, who was not involved with this research.
A shallower jungle fowl gene pool could also mean diminished resources for breeding better chickens. The genetics of wild relatives are sometimes used to bolster the disease or pest resistance of domesticated crop plants. Jungle fowl genomes could be similarly valuable for this reason.
“If this trend continues unabated, future human generations may only be able to access the entirety of ancestral genetic diversity of chickens in the form of museum specimens,” Rheindt says, which could hamper chicken breeding efforts using the wild fowl genes.
Some countries such as Singapore, Rheindt says, have started managing jungle fowl populations to reduce interbreeding with chickens.
The worst procrastinators probably won’t be able to read this story. It’ll remind them of what they’re trying to avoid, psychologist Piers Steel says.
Maybe they’re dragging their feet going to the gym. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to their New Year’s resolutions. Maybe they’re waiting just one more day to study for that test.
Procrastination is “putting off to later what you know you should be doing now,” even if you’ll be worse off, says Steel, of the University of Calgary in Canada. But all those tasks pushed to tomorrow seem to wedge themselves into the mind — and it may be harming people’s health. In a study of thousands of university students, scientists linked procrastination to a panoply of poor outcomes, including depression, anxiety and even disabling arm pain. “I was surprised when I saw that one,” says Fred Johansson, a clinical psychologist at Sophiahemmet University in Stockholm. His team reported the results January 4 in JAMA Network Open.
The study is one of the largest yet to tackle procrastination’s ties to health. Its results echo findings from earlier studies that have gone largely ignored, says Fuschia Sirois, a behavioral scientist at Durham University in England, who was not involved with the new research.
For years, scientists didn’t seem to view procrastination as something serious, she says. The new study could change that. “It’s that kind of big splash that’s … going to get attention,” Sirois says. “I’m hoping that it will raise awareness of the physical health consequences of procrastination.”
Procrastinating may be bad for the mind and body Whether procrastination harms health can seem like a chicken-and-egg situation.
It can be hard to tell if certain health problems make people more likely to procrastinate — or the other way around, Johansson says. (It may be a bit of both.) And controlled experiments on procrastination aren’t easy to do: You can’t just tell a study participant to become a procrastinator and wait and see if their health changes, he says. Many previous studies have relied on self-reported surveys taken at a single time point. But a snapshot of someone makes it tricky to untangle cause and effect. Instead, in the new study, about 3,500 students were followed over nine months, so researchers could track whether procrastinating students later developed health issues.
On average, these students tended to fare worse over time than their prompter peers. They were slightly more stressed, anxious, depressed and sleep-deprived, among other issues, Johansson and colleagues found. “People who score higher on procrastination to begin with … are at greater risk of developing both physical and psychological problems later on,” says study coauthor Alexander Rozental, a clinical psychologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. “There is a relationship between procrastination at one time point and having these negative outcomes at the later point.”
The study was observational, so the team can’t say for sure that procrastination causes poor health. But results from other researchers also seem to point in this direction. A 2021 study tied procrastinating at bedtime to depression. And a 2015 study from Sirois’ lab linked procrastinating to poor heart health.
Stress may be to blame for procrastination’s ill effects, data from Sirois’ lab and other studies suggest. She thinks that the effects of chronic procrastinating could build up over time. And though procrastination alone may not cause disease, Sirois says, it could be “one extra factor that can tip the scales.”
No, procrastinators are not lazy Some 20 percent of adults are estimated to be chronic procrastinators. Everyone might put off a task or two, but chronic procrastinators make it their lifestyle, says Joseph Ferrari, a psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago, who has been studying procrastination for decades. “They do it at home, at school, at work and in their relationships.” These are the people, he says, who “you know are going to RSVP late.”
Though procrastinators may think they perform better under pressure, Ferrari has reported the opposite. They actually worked more slowly and made more errors than non-procrastinators, his experiments have shown. And when deadlines are slippery, procrastinators tend to let their work slide, Steel’s team reported last year in Frontiers in Psychology.
For years, researchers have focused on the personalities of people who procrastinate. Findings vary, but some scientists suggest procrastinators may be impulsive, worriers and have trouble regulating their emotions. One thing procrastinators are not, Ferrari emphasizes, is lazy. They’re actually “very busy doing other things than what they’re supposed to be doing,” he says.
In fact, Rozental adds, most research today suggests procrastination is a behavioral pattern.
And if procrastination is a behavior, he says, that means it’s something you can change, regardless of whether you’re impulsive.
Why procrastinators should be kind to themselves When people put off a tough task, they feel good — in the moment. Procrastinating is a way to sidestep the negative emotions linked to the task, Sirois says. “We’re sort of hardwired to avoid anything painful or difficult,” she says. “When you procrastinate, you get immediate relief.” A backdrop of stressful circumstances — say, a worldwide pandemic — can strain people’s ability to cope, making procrastinating even easier. But the relief it provides is only temporary, and many seek out ways to stop dawdling.
Researchers have experimented with procrastination treatments that run the gamut from the logistical to the psychological. What works best is still under investigation. Some scientists have reported success with time-management interventions. But the evidence for that “is all over the map,” Sirois says. That’s because “poor time management is a symptom not a cause of procrastination,” she adds.
For some procrastinators, seemingly obvious tips can work. In his clinical practice, Rozental advises students to simply put down their smartphones. Silencing notifications or studying in the library rather than at home can quash distractions and keep people on task. But that won’t be enough for many people, he says.
Hard-core procrastinators may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. In a 2018 review of procrastination treatments, Rozental found that this type of therapy, which involves managing thoughts and emotions and trying to change behavior, seemed to be the most helpful. Still, not many studies have examined treatments, and there’s room for improvement, he says.
Sirois also favors an emotion-centered approach. Procrastinators can fall into a shame spiral where they feel uneasy about a task, put the task off, feel ashamed for putting it off and then feel even worse than when they started. People need to short-circuit that loop, she says. Self-forgiveness may help, scientists suggested in one 2020 study. So could mindfulness training.
In a small trial of university students, eight weekly mindfulness sessions reduced procrastination, Sirois and colleagues reported in the January Learning and Individual Differences. Students practiced focusing on the body, meditating during unpleasant activities and discussed the best way to take care of themselves. A little self-compassion may snap people out of their spiral, Sirois says.
“You made a mistake and procrastinated. It’s not the end of the world,” she says. “What can you do to move forward?”
Two more top-10 teams in contention for the College Football Playoff lost on Saturday, creating yet more work for the selection committee. Well, sort of.
While the committee was forced to reshuffle the rankings after the losses of No. 3 Oregon (38-7 to No. 23 Utah) and No. 7 Michigan State (56-7 to No. 4 Ohio State), those outcomes actually created a more streamlined top 25 in the final weeks of the season. The selection committee no longer has to explain why No. 6 Michigan ranked ahead of Michigan State, despite the Spartans' head-to-head victory over the Wolverines. Nor do they need to worry about where to rank Oregon, which beat Ohio State in Week 2, well before the Buckeyes' resurgence. The only actual problem created from Saturday's slate of games wasn't even a problem at all: Where to rank Alabama in relation to Ohio State.
The committee chose to push the Buckeyes ahead of the Crimson Tide in the latest rankings. That decision ultimately won't matter, considering Alabama must face No. 1 Georgia in the SEC championship game. A win there would give Nick Saban and Co. the top overall seed. A loss would eliminate the Tide from championship contention.
The committee will pay close attention to "The Game" and Bedlam in Week 13, two rivalry games that feature 10-1 opponents in Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. That will further clear up the playoff picture, the final rankings for which are quickly approaching.
With that, here are the top 25 teams in the latest CFP rankings: College Football Playoff rankings 2021 Who are the top four CFP teams of fourth CFP poll of 2021? Ranking Team Record 1 Georgia 11-0 2 Ohio State 10-1 3 Alabama 10-1 4 Cincinnati 11-0 Who are the first two teams out of fourth CFP poll of 2021? Ranking Team Record 5 Michigan 10-1 6 Notre Dame 10-1 CFP top 25 rankings from fourth CFP poll of 2021 Rank Team Record 1 Georgia 11-0 2 Ohio State 10-1 3 Alabama 10-1 4 Cincinnati 11-0 5 Michigan 10-1 6 Notre Dame 10-1 7 Oklahoma State 10-1 8 Baylor 9-2 9 Ole Miss 9-2 10 Oklahoma 10-1 11 Oregon 9-2 12 Michigan State 9-2 13 BYU 9-2 14 Wisconsin 8-3 15 Texas A&M 8-3 16 Iowa 9-2 17 Pittsburgh 9-2 18 Wake Forest 9-2 19 Utah 8-3 20 NC State 8-3 21 San Diego State 10-1 22 UTSA 11-0 23 Clemson 8-3 24 Houston 10-1 25 Arkansas 7-4
There will be much more on the line Saturday night than just the WBO welterweight title.
If Terence Crawford can defeat Shawn Porter to move to 38-0, he could set himself up for even bigger battles down the road. Even Crawford himself has acknowledged that he has more blockbuster bouts on his mind, including a potential clash with Errol Spence Jr. "I've been calling for these fights," Crawford told Timothy Bradley Jr. "Me and Shawn, we talked about fighting. I've told him, 'I'm not looking to fight you.' I'm looking to fight Spence. I'm looking to fight Keith Thurman because, you know, they got something to offer. I'm looking at them trying to use Shawn as a pawn because they know Shawn, he's gonna fight anybody.
"If I do too good, they might back up even more. We're here now. I'm gonna show them why they've been ducking me."
Can Crawford continue his run of dominance and put a notable win on his resume? Or will Porter pull off the upset in Las Vegas? Boxing fans can purchase the Crawford vs. Porter pay-per-view through ESPN+. The prelim card will air live on ESPN2 starting at 7 p.m. ET.
What time is Terence Crawford vs. Shawn Porter? Date: Saturday, Nov. 20 Time: 9 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. PT Main event: 11:30 p.m. ET | 8:30 p.m. PT (estimate) The Crawford vs. Porter fight card is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET on Saturday, Nov. 20. Crawford and Porter are expected to make their ring walks around 11:30 p.m. ET, though that could change depending on the length of the earlier fights.
Terence Crawford vs. Shawn Porter fight card Terence Crawford vs. Shawn Porter for Crawford's WBO welterweight title Esquiva Falcao vs. Patrice Volny; Middleweight Janibek Alimkhanuly vs. Hassan N'Dam; Middleweight Raymond Muratalla vs. Steven Ortiz; Lightweight We may earn an affiliate commission when you sign up for a streaming service through our links. Sporting News' affiliates have no influence over the editorial content included in this article.
With his first 3-pointer early in the Bucks home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, All-Star Khris Middleton made franchise history.
He surpassed franchise legend and Hall of Famer Ray Allen for the most 3-pointers in Bucks' regular-season history. Allen, considered one of the greatest shooters of all-time, set the tally of 1,051 3-pointers in 494 games for the Bucks between 1996 and 2003. He knocked them down at an average of 2.1 per game at an efficiency of 40.6 percent.
On the other hand, Middleton passed Allen's tally in his 566th regular-season game for the Bucks and sits atop the leaderboard with 1,054 career 3-pointers. The 30-year-old is making 1.9 3-pointers per game at a rate of 39.4 percent. 2021 has been considered quite the year for Middleton with this recent record only the cherry on top.
Just days after winning the 2021 championship with the Bucks, Middleton travelled to Tokyo to be part of Team USA's roster that went on to win the Olympic gold medal.
"To break a record like this, any franchise record is amazing," Middleton said postgame. Both Allen and Middleton were acquired by the Bucks in trades.
Drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth overall pick in the 1996 Draft, Allen and Andrew Lang were traded to the Bucks for the draft rights to fourth pick Stephon Marbury.
Meanwhile, Middleton was acquired by the Bucks in 2013 along with Brandon Knight and Viacheslav Kravtsov from the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Brandon Jennings. The Pistons had drafted Middleton with the 39th overall pick in the 2012 Draft.
Sidney Crosby has played in just two of the Penguins' first 14 games this season. And even if he isn't lighting up the stat sheet, he certainly made his presence known on Sunday.
In the Penguins' 6-1 loss to the Capitals, Crosby struggled mightily. He recorded one shot on goal in just under 17 minutes of ice time, and let his frustration boil over in the third period. After taking his lone shot on goal less than three minutes into the third period with Washington's Martin Fehervary playing defense, the two skated behind the net where Crosby threw the young defenseman face-first into the boards. Crosby wasn't penalized on that play but did get sent to the box for cross-checking Evgeny Kuznetzov around seven minutes later. Tom Wilson scored on the ensuing power play to make it 6-1. After the game, the 22-year-old Fehervary didn't seem to pay much mind to Crosby's actions and didn't really have much to say on the matter.
"Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what should I talk about it," he told reporters. "I don't care. We'll see next game." Crosby has zero points, five shot attempts and has a plus/minus of -4 to kick start his 2021-22 campaign. The star center — who has already been named to Canada's Olympic squad — missed the first seven games of the season while recovering from offseason surgery on his left wrist. He returned Oct. 30 vs. the Devils before having to enter COVID-19 protocols on Nov. 3. Sunday's game was his first time slotting in.
The Penguins and Capitals have had some notorious and infamous battles in recent years and will next face off on Dec. 10 in Washington.
It might not erase memories of last year's Eastern Conference Finals, but it could kickstart a sputtering start to the season.
The Atlanta Hawks snapped a six-game losing streak in emphatic style, blowing out the Milwaukee Bucks 120-100 at State Farm Arena.
The win was a continuation of a gauntlet schedule for the Hawks, with Trae Young exploding for a season-high 42 points to end the skid.
"He came out very aggressive. He felt the rhythm and stayed with it," head coach Nate McMillan said. "I thought he established a tempo on both ends of the floor. I loved the pace that we played with tonight."
The win over Milwaukee ends a stretch of games that has seen the Hawks face Brooklyn, Utah, Phoenix, Golden State, Utah again and then Denver in succession.
Forget the fact that those squads are all hoping to contend for a title, the Hawks are also battling their own expectations after a spectacular run to the Conference Finals.
"That's something that these guys are going through for the first time. Being a team that other opponents respect," McMillan said.
"We played some really good teams to start this season off. I thought last year we played good basketball and I don't think people were writing us off but this year they are coming in ready to play. This is something we are going through for the first time and guys are learning what it's like when expectations are higher."
"It's very similar to postseason play. You can tell them how physical it's going to be but until you go through it and experience it they really won't know."
The win improves Atlanta to 5-9 on the season, with the next four games all at home.
More than anything, Atlanta fans will be pleased to see the return of Young at his best, with the explosive scorer pouring in seven first-half triples on his way to 27 points through two quarters. He finished the night 8-for-13 from long range, with the eight makes his most in a game since January.
Prior to tonight, Young was just 34.4 percent from long range, with his ten assists giving him his sixth double-double of the season.
The Hawks offense found it's mojo against Milwaukee, with John Collins once again becoming an above-the-rim threat in pick-and-roll situations with Young.
Collins finished with 19 points and six rebounds, while also drawing two offensive fouls on Giannis Antetokounmpo.
It's only one win, and it came against an injury hit Bucks team at the end of a five-game road trip, but for the first time in a while the Hawks looked like last year's version.
