Purdue signs research agreement with Los Alamos nuclear lab, seeks lab station near Purdue
The latest agreement marks Purdue's most public involvement with the lab since 2018, when it lost a bid to run Los Alamos to a team including the University of California and Texas A&M amid a National Nuclear Security Administration push for a change in leadership."Purdue researchers have collaborated with Los Alamos National Lab researchers for decades since the Manhattan Project," Chiang said. "This (memorandum) creates a new framework for partnering in the research capabilities and infrastructures of both Purdue and Los Alamos to make critical advances that strengthen our national security."Los Alamos Director Thom Mason called Purdue a "natural partner in tackling the complex challenges vital to our nation's future."
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue signs research agreement with Los Alamos nuclear lab
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Gizmodo
13 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Our Neanderthal Cousins Were Big Maggot Eaters, Scientists Argue
Modern humanity's most famous cousins, the Neanderthals, may have had a clever, if unappealing, dietary trick for survival: maggots. Research out today posits these creepy crawly fly larvae provided Neanderthals an ample source of essential nitrogen and fat. Scientists at Purdue University, the University of Michigan, and others conducted the study, published Friday in Science Advances. Using both experimental and historical data, they showed that maggot-infused meat is rich in fat and nitrogen and that similar human populations have commonly included such foods in their diets. The team argues that maggots are the most reasonable explanation for why Neanderthals had very high levels of nitrogen in their system. 'Fly larvae are a fat-rich, nutrient dense, ubiquitous, and easily procured insect resource, and both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, much like recent foragers, would benefit from taking full advantage of them,' lead author Melanie Beasley, a paleoanthropologist at Purdue, told Gizmodo. Nitrogen is a much-needed nutrient; among other things, it's used to help create amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Speaking of protein, dietary nitrogen is most abundantly found in animal meat (though certain leafy vegetables and legumes are also high in it). The excavated remains of Neanderthals are known to have high levels of nitrogen isotopes, indicating they had plenty of nitrogen in their diets. According to Beasley, most researchers have assumed this meant Neanderthals were hypercarnivores—predators at the top of the food chain that ate lots of freshly killed large animals, mammoths included. But in 2017, co-author John Speth put forth a different hypothesis: that Neanderthals were actually eating lots of stored and putrid meat filled with maggots. Both then and now, researchers note that some Indigenous groups in the Northern Hemisphere have regularly and intentionally eaten maggot-rich food—practically as a delicacy. In 1931, for instance, Knud Rasmussen, a polar explorer and anthropologist, wrote this anecdote about him and some members of an Inuit community coming across a cache of meat: 'The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it, it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish.' Beasley heard about Speth's argument and said she could help him test it out experimentally. At the time, she was pursuing a postdoctoral degree that involved studying muscle tissue decomposition in deceased people. This work also meant Beasley would spend much of her time around the maggots that feed on decaying tissue. Beasley and her colleagues documented the changing nitrogen levels in these samples of decaying tissue along with three different species of fly maggots. As the tissue decayed, levels of nitrogen inside changed modestly. The maggots themselves, however, were chock-full of nitrogen. Given the conditions back then, it would have been impossible for Neanderthals to avoid some maggots ending up in any animal meat they tried to store. Rather than a hindrance, though, these hominids probably made the most of the situation, using the maggots to turn their lean meat into a 'fat-rich, more complete food resource,' Beasley said. The researchers are still collecting more evidence to shore up their argument for maggot-eating Neanderthals, and they're also working to understand how the nutritional benefits of maggot-rich food change over time (exactly when is rotten meat too rotten, in other words?). However Neanderthals ate their meat, though, there are many people today still using insects and maggots to spice up their diet, the researchers point out. In Europe, for instance, there's casu marzu, a Sardinian sheep's milk cheese that's intentionally laced with cheese fly (Piophila casei) maggots. Much love to my Neanderthal brethren and casu marzu fans, but I think I'll still just stick to some classic sharp cheddar for my next cheese plate.
CNN
13 hours ago
- CNN
Prehistoric diets were maggot heavy, a new study suggests
Neanderthals had a voracious appetite for meat. They hunted big game and chowed down on woolly mammoth steak as they huddled around a fire. Or so thought many archaeologists who study the Stone Age. Fresh meat was far from the only thing on the menu, according to a growing body of research that has revealed our archaic cousins ate a varied diet that included pulses and shellfish. Still, a chemical signature in Neanderthal remains that suggests robust meat eating — observed at higher levels than those seen in top predators such as lions and wolves — has puzzled researchers for decades. Now, new research hints at an unexpected Stone Age food. Maggots — the larvae of flies, which hatch in and feed on decaying animal tissue — may also have been a staple of prehistoric diets, a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests. Lead author Melanie Beasley, an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, found that a taste for maggots could explain a distinctive chemical signature detected in the bones of prehistoric humans, including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, a species that went extinct 40,000 years ago. The findings back up a hypothesis that had been put forward by Beasley's coauthor John Speth, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, who has for nearly a decade argued that putrid meat and fish would have formed a key part of prehistoric diets. His work was based on ethnographic accounts of the diets of indigenous groups, who he said found rotten meat and maggots acceptable fare. 'Not a lot of people took notice, because it was like this is an out-there idea. And there wasn't any data,' said Beasley, who heard Speth give a talk in 2017 and subsequently decided to test his hypothesis. To understand past diets and where an animal sat in the ancient food chain, scientists study the chemical signature of different isotopes, or variants, of elements such as nitrogen or carbon, which are preserved in teeth and bones over thousands of years. Researchers first found in the 1990s that the fossilized bones of Neanderthals unearthed in Northern Europe had particularly elevated levels of the nitrogen-15 isotope, a chemical signature that suggests their meat consumption was on par with hypercarnivores such as lions or wolves. 'Grass will have one (nitrogen) value, but then the deer that eats the grass is going to have a higher value, and then the carnivore that eats the deer is going to have an even higher value,' Beasley explained. 'So you can track nitrogen through this trophic food web system.' Neanderthal remains, she said, had even higher nitrogen values than carnivores. This was puzzling, however, because modern-day humans, unlike wolves and lions, cannot stomach large quantities of lean meat. Overindulging in it can lead to a potentially lethal form of malnutrition in which the liver fails to break down the protein and rid the body of excess nitrogen. Known today as protein poisoning, the condition was more common among European explorers of North America — who dubbed the illness 'rabbit poisoning' or 'mal de caribou' — given that wild game was far leaner than today's farmed meat. Archaeologists believe that Neanderthals understood the importance of fatty nutrients, and, at least in one location in what's now Germany, processed animal bones on a large scale to extract the fat. Rotten meat might be higher in nitrogen than fresh tissue and may have been responsible for boosting nitrogen levels in Neanderthal bones, Speth's research has suggested. Not long after hearing Speth speak, Beasley, who was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she conducted research at its Forensic Anthropology Center, decided to investigate. The research facility, sometimes described as a body farm, was established to study how the human body decomposes. There, she analyzed nitrogen levels in the rotting tissue of donated human corpses left outdoors and the fly larvae that formed in the muscle tissue. The work, conducted over a two-year period, required a strong stomach, she said. Beasley found that nitrogen levels increased modestly over time in the human tissue. However, she observed much higher nitrogen levels in the fly larvae, suggesting that Neanderthals and early modern humans likely consumed animal meat laced with maggots on a regular basis. 'I started getting the (nitrogen) values back, and they were just astronomically high,' Beasley recalled. 'John (Speth) and I started talking: What if it's not just the putrid meat, but it's the fact that … they're never going to be able to prevent flies from coming and landing on the meat, and so fly larva just become part of the delicacy,' she said. The data from her work not only provides insight into the Neanderthal diet but also informs modern forensic science, with nitrogen levels in maggots that form in human corpses helping scientists pinpoint time since death, she noted. It was a 'no brainer' that Neanderthals ate maggots, said Karen Hardy, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Hardy, who wasn't involved in the study, said the authors provided a 'strong argument in favor of maggot consumption,' although such behavior is unlikely to be conclusively proven because maggot remains do not survive in the archaeological record. 'The surprise element is more to do with our Western perspective on what is edible and what is not,' she added. Today, at least 2 billion people worldwide are estimated to consume insects as part of traditional diets, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The study also noted that, according to historical accounts, many indigenous peoples such as the Inuit 'viewed thoroughly putrefied, maggot-infested animal foods as highly desirable fare, not starvation rations.' Many such groups, according to the study, 'routinely, often intentionally, allowed animal foods to decompose to the point where they were crawling with maggots, in some cases even beginning to liquify, and inevitably emitting a stench so overpowering that early European explorers, fur trappers, and missionaries were sickened by it.' Knud Rasmussen, a polar explorer from Greenland, recorded the following culinary experience, cited in the study, in his 1931 book 'The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture.' 'The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it, it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish. I criticised their taste, but they … said, not illogically: 'You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.' The study also noted that maggots are not unknown in Western culinary traditions, noting the Sardinian cheese casu marzu is replete with the larvae of cheese skipper flies. Beasley said that Northern latitude groups still process these foods today and consume them safely when prepared following traditional practices. Beasley's research on modern-day corpses was exploratory and had several limitations, she cautioned. The work, which involved small sample sizes, focused on human muscle tissue, not the tissue or organs of animals that might have been hunted by Neanderthals. What's more, the fly larvae, which came from three different families, might have differed from those that existed in the late Pleistocene, which ended around 11,000 years ago. The study also didn't account for the wide variety of climates and temperatures that would have had an effect on stored meat in the Stone Age. She also added that the human body tissue wasn't cooked, processed or prepared in any way. Beasley has spoken with researchers in Alaska in the hopes of connecting with native groups that would be interested in sharing traditional food preparations. Her goal is to better understand how that might affect the nitrogen level. The new research has 'opened a fascinating line of inquiry' into the culinary practices of Stone Age hunter-gatherers such as Neanderthals, said Wil Roebroeks, professor emeritus of paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He wasn't involved in the research. 'It certainly gives a fresh — if that is the right word here — perspective on Neanderthal and other Late Pleistocene humans' diets,' Roebroeks added. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
13 hours ago
- CNN
Prehistoric diets were maggot heavy, a new study suggests
Neanderthals had a voracious appetite for meat. They hunted big game and chowed down on woolly mammoth steak as they huddled around a fire. Or so thought many archaeologists who study the Stone Age. Fresh meat was far from the only thing on the menu, according to a growing body of research that has revealed our archaic cousins ate a varied diet that included pulses and shellfish. Still, a chemical signature in Neanderthal remains that suggests robust meat eating — observed at higher levels than those seen in top predators such as lions and wolves — has puzzled researchers for decades. Now, new research hints at an unexpected Stone Age food. Maggots — the larvae of flies, which hatch in and feed on decaying animal tissue — may also have been a staple of prehistoric diets, a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests. Lead author Melanie Beasley, an assistant professor of biological anthropology at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, found that a taste for maggots could explain a distinctive chemical signature detected in the bones of prehistoric humans, including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, a species that went extinct 40,000 years ago. The findings back up a hypothesis that had been put forward by Beasley's coauthor John Speth, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, who has for nearly a decade argued that putrid meat and fish would have formed a key part of prehistoric diets. His work was based on ethnographic accounts of the diets of indigenous groups, who he said found rotten meat and maggots acceptable fare. 'Not a lot of people took notice, because it was like this is an out-there idea. And there wasn't any data,' said Beasley, who heard Speth give a talk in 2017 and subsequently decided to test his hypothesis. To understand past diets and where an animal sat in the ancient food chain, scientists study the chemical signature of different isotopes, or variants, of elements such as nitrogen or carbon, which are preserved in teeth and bones over thousands of years. Researchers first found in the 1990s that the fossilized bones of Neanderthals unearthed in Northern Europe had particularly elevated levels of the nitrogen-15 isotope, a chemical signature that suggests their meat consumption was on par with hypercarnivores such as lions or wolves. 'Grass will have one (nitrogen) value, but then the deer that eats the grass is going to have a higher value, and then the carnivore that eats the deer is going to have an even higher value,' Beasley explained. 'So you can track nitrogen through this trophic food web system.' Neanderthal remains, she said, had even higher nitrogen values than carnivores. This was puzzling, however, because modern-day humans, unlike wolves and lions, cannot stomach large quantities of lean meat. Overindulging in it can lead to a potentially lethal form of malnutrition in which the liver fails to break down the protein and rid the body of excess nitrogen. Known today as protein poisoning, the condition was more common among European explorers of North America — who dubbed the illness 'rabbit poisoning' or 'mal de caribou' — given that wild game was far leaner than today's farmed meat. Archaeologists believe that Neanderthals understood the importance of fatty nutrients, and, at least in one location in what's now Germany, processed animal bones on a large scale to extract the fat. Rotten meat might be higher in nitrogen than fresh tissue and may have been responsible for boosting nitrogen levels in Neanderthal bones, Speth's research has suggested. Not long after hearing Speth speak, Beasley, who was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she conducted research at its Forensic Anthropology Center, decided to investigate. The research facility, sometimes described as a body farm, was established to study how the human body decomposes. There, she analyzed nitrogen levels in the rotting tissue of donated human corpses left outdoors and the fly larvae that formed in the muscle tissue. The work, conducted over a two-year period, required a strong stomach, she said. Beasley found that nitrogen levels increased modestly over time in the human tissue. However, she observed much higher nitrogen levels in the fly larvae, suggesting that Neanderthals and early modern humans likely consumed animal meat laced with maggots on a regular basis. 'I started getting the (nitrogen) values back, and they were just astronomically high,' Beasley recalled. 'John (Speth) and I started talking: What if it's not just the putrid meat, but it's the fact that … they're never going to be able to prevent flies from coming and landing on the meat, and so fly larva just become part of the delicacy,' she said. The data from her work not only provides insight into the Neanderthal diet but also informs modern forensic science, with nitrogen levels in maggots that form in human corpses helping scientists pinpoint time since death, she noted. It was a 'no brainer' that Neanderthals ate maggots, said Karen Hardy, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Hardy, who wasn't involved in the study, said the authors provided a 'strong argument in favor of maggot consumption,' although such behavior is unlikely to be conclusively proven because maggot remains do not survive in the archaeological record. 'The surprise element is more to do with our Western perspective on what is edible and what is not,' she added. Today, at least 2 billion people worldwide are estimated to consume insects as part of traditional diets, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The study also noted that, according to historical accounts, many indigenous peoples such as the Inuit 'viewed thoroughly putrefied, maggot-infested animal foods as highly desirable fare, not starvation rations.' Many such groups, according to the study, 'routinely, often intentionally, allowed animal foods to decompose to the point where they were crawling with maggots, in some cases even beginning to liquify, and inevitably emitting a stench so overpowering that early European explorers, fur trappers, and missionaries were sickened by it.' Knud Rasmussen, a polar explorer from Greenland, recorded the following culinary experience, cited in the study, in his 1931 book 'The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture.' 'The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it, it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish. I criticised their taste, but they … said, not illogically: 'You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.' The study also noted that maggots are not unknown in Western culinary traditions, noting the Sardinian cheese casu marzu is replete with the larvae of cheese skipper flies. Beasley said that Northern latitude groups still process these foods today and consume them safely when prepared following traditional practices. Beasley's research on modern-day corpses was exploratory and had several limitations, she cautioned. The work, which involved small sample sizes, focused on human muscle tissue, not the tissue or organs of animals that might have been hunted by Neanderthals. What's more, the fly larvae, which came from three different families, might have differed from those that existed in the late Pleistocene, which ended around 11,000 years ago. The study also didn't account for the wide variety of climates and temperatures that would have had an effect on stored meat in the Stone Age. She also added that the human body tissue wasn't cooked, processed or prepared in any way. Beasley has spoken with researchers in Alaska in the hopes of connecting with native groups that would be interested in sharing traditional food preparations. Her goal is to better understand how that might affect the nitrogen level. The new research has 'opened a fascinating line of inquiry' into the culinary practices of Stone Age hunter-gatherers such as Neanderthals, said Wil Roebroeks, professor emeritus of paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He wasn't involved in the research. 'It certainly gives a fresh — if that is the right word here — perspective on Neanderthal and other Late Pleistocene humans' diets,' Roebroeks added. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
