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A life form of the former world, apparently distinct from those in the present. Call me immature but I see what I see, and they look unequivocally phallic to me.

"Mysterious Giants Could Be a Whole New Kind of Life That No Longer Exists" | Science Alert

Quote

Prototaxites doesn't compare with any other life form we know of. (Loron et al., Science, 2025)

Ever since their discovery more than 165 years ago, massive fossilized structures left by an organism known as Prototaxites have proven impossible to categorize.

Researchers in the UK have suggested in a recently published study that there's a very good reason these oddities don't fit neatly on the tree of life – they belong to a branch all of their own, with no modern equivalent.

Some 400 million years ago, the swamps of the late Silurian period would have sprouted a mix of horsetails, ferns, and other prototype plants that look positively alien today.

Among them stretched 8-meter (26-foot) tall towers that defy easy identification. Wide and branchless, these organisms may have been a form of algae or ancient conifer, researchers suspect, based on what little evidence remains.

Fossils found on the shores of Gaspé Bay in Quebec, Canada, were initially considered by geologist John William Dawson to be the remains of rotting trees, leading to his naming it 'first conifer' back in the 1850s.

Though the name stuck, confusion over the fossil's classification continued until National Museum of Natural History paleontologist Francis Hueber confirmed in 2001 that Prototaxites was indeed most likely an enormous fungus.

That conclusion was backed up years later in 2017 by a subsequent analysis of a fossil fragment assumed to be from the peripheral region of a smaller Prototaxites species named P. taiti.

The 2017 study claimed to identify textures that resembled the fertile structures of today's Ascomycota fungi.

Not everybody is convinced, however, given the possibility that the distinct fragments might not have even been connected.

"In the books and books of anatomy written about living fungi, we never find structures like that," University of Edinburgh paleobotanist Alexander Hetherington told Erik Stokstad at Science magazine.

Hetherington co-led a study on three different P. taiti fragments, concluding there's insufficient evidence to conclude Prototaxites is a fungus at all.

Through a review of microscopic anatomy and chemical analysis of its tubular structures, the team of researchers systematically eliminated each and every candidate group, leaving no modern organism with which it might share some kind of ancestral relationship.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Prototaxites fossils are structurally and chemically distinct from extinct and extant Fungi" | Science Advances

QuotePrototaxites was the first giant organism to live on the terrestrial surface, represented by columnar fossils of up to eight meters from the Early Devonian. However, its systematic affinity has been debated for over 165 years. There are now two remaining viable hypotheses: Prototaxites was either a fungus, or a member of an entirely extinct lineage.

Here, we investigate the affinity of Prototaxites by contrasting its organization and molecular composition with that of Fungi. We report that fossils of Prototaxites taiti from the 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert were chemically distinct from contemporaneous Fungi and structurally distinct from all known Fungi. This finding casts doubt upon the fungal affinity of Prototaxites, instead suggesting that this enigmatic organism is best assigned to an entirely extinct eukaryotic lineage.

#76

Science / Re: Early Signs of Dementia in...

Last post by zorkan - January 30, 2026, 04:52:21 PM

Last year I went to a cousin's funeral, died aged 79.
He had dementia and his carer told me he slurred his words.

Yet women have twice the risk.
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/blog/why-dementia-different-women

https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/stages-and-symptoms/dementia-symptoms/dementia-and-language

A lot of debate centres on sport's stars.
Like footballers who head the ball and rugby players in the scrum.
List of casualties is almost endless.
A couple of high profile cases here in the UK recently:

"Repeatedly heading a football is "likely" to have contributed to the brain disease which was a factor in the death of former Scotland and Manchester United footballer Gordon McQueen, an inquest has found.
McQueen, who was diagnosed with vascular dementia, died in 2023 aged 70."

"In December 2020, (Steve) Thompson, aged 42, revealed that he had been diagnosed with early onset dementia with probable chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is caused by repeated blows to the head (CTE can only be confirmed by post-mortem dissection of the brain). He said that he has no memory at all of events such as winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup and sometimes forgets his wife's name. He has also said he would not play rugby again, and would not like his son to take up rugby "the way it is at the moment"."

#77

Science / Re: Early Signs of Dementia in...

Last post by Dark Lightning - January 28, 2026, 02:32:21 PM

I didn't find out about Pratchett until about 8 years ago. I read a lot if sci fi and fantasy, so I'm not sure how that happened. I really enjoy his writing.

Watching my MiL slide into dementia was painful. It's fascinating what I've been reading in science news these days, in terms of treatment. There's a lot of bleeding edge tech. I mentioned to my doctor that I feel myself slipping. I don't want to develop dementia. Most of said degradation came from sleeping in a recliner for a year because of reflux. I now have a bed that the head and foot portions rise, like a hospital bed. I sleep better.

#78

Science / Early Signs of Dementia in Sir...

Last post by Recusant - January 28, 2026, 06:41:58 AM

Having considered attempts at coming up with a Pratchettian title and theme for this post, I decided to belay that notion out of respect for the master. The article below has reminded me to return to Discworld for some spiritual refreshment.

The investigation it describes could be seen as somewhat ghoulish but generally for a good cause. Appropriate I think, if you know his writing, and Sir Terry might approve. Having experienced dementia as a caregiver I pay attention to developments in the field anyway but it was Pratchett's name that caught my eye.

This could have gone in the Brain thread in honor of Dr. xSilverPhinx's recent visit, but Pratchett deserves his own thread every time.

"Terry Pratchett's novels may have held clues to his dementia a decade before diagnosis, our new study suggests" | The Conversation

QuoteThe earliest signs of dementia are rarely dramatic. They do not arrive as forgotten names or misplaced keys, but as changes so subtle they are almost impossible to notice: a slightly narrower vocabulary, less variation in description, a gentle flattening of language.

New research my colleagues and I conducted suggests that these changes may be detectable years before a formal diagnosis — and one of the clearest examples may lie hidden in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett.

Pratchett is remembered as one of Britain's most imaginative writers, the creator of the Discworld series and a master of satire whose work combined humour with sharp moral insight. Following his diagnosis of posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, he became a powerful advocate for dementia research and awareness. Less well known is that the early effects of the disease may already have been present in his writing long before he knew he was ill.

Dementia is often described as a condition of memory loss, but this is only part of the story. In its earliest stages, dementia can affect attention, perception and language before memory problems become obvious. These early changes are difficult to detect because they are gradual and easily mistaken for stress, ageing or normal variation in behaviour.

Language, however, offers a unique window into cognitive change. The words we choose, the variety of our vocabulary and the way we structure description are tightly linked to brain function. Even small shifts in language use may reflect underlying neurological change.

In our recent study, we analysed the language used across Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, examining how his writing evolved over time. We focused on "lexical diversity" — a measure of how varied an author's word choices are — and paid particular attention to adjectives, the descriptive words that give prose its texture, colour and emotional depth.

Across Pratchett's later novels, there was a clear and statistically significant decline in the diversity of adjectives he used. The richness of descriptive language gradually narrowed. This was not something a reader would necessarily notice, nor did it reflect a sudden deterioration in quality. Instead, it was a subtle, progressive change detectable only through detailed linguistic analysis.

Crucially, the first significant drop appeared in The Last Continent, published almost ten years before Pratchett received his formal diagnosis. This suggests that the "preclinical phase" of dementia — the period during which disease-related changes are already occurring in the brain — may have begun many years earlier, without obvious outward symptoms.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Detecting Dementia Using Lexical Analysis: Terry Pratchett's Discworld Tells a More Personal Story" | Brain Sciences

QuoteAbstract:

Background/Objectives: Dementia, characterised by cognitive decline, significantly impacts language abilities. While the risk of dementia increases with age, it often manifests years before clinical diagnosis. Identifying early warning signs is crucial for timely intervention. Previous research has demonstrated that changes in language, such as reduced vocabulary diversity and simpler sentence structures, may be observed in individuals with dementia.

This study investigates the potential of linguistic analysis to detect early signs of cognitive decline by examining the writing of Sir Terry Pratchett, a renowned author diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA), typically a form of dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease.

Methods: This study analysed 33 Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, comparing linguistic features before and after a potential turning point identified through analysis of adjective type-token ratios (TTR).

Results: A significant decrease in lexical diversity (TTR) was observed for nouns and adjectives in later works. Total wordcount increased, while lexical diversity decreased, suggesting a shift towards simpler language. This shift coincided with a decrease in adjective TTR below a defined threshold, occurring approximately ten years before Pratchett's formal diagnosis.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that subtle changes in linguistic patterns, such as decreased lexical diversity, may precede clinical diagnosis of dementia by a considerable margin. This research highlights the potential of linguistic analysis as a valuable tool for early detection of cognitive decline. Further research is needed to validate these findings in larger cohorts and explore the specific linguistic markers associated with different types of dementia.

#79

Politics / Re: amerika

Last post by billy rubin - January 26, 2026, 11:03:33 PM

ICE is doing targeted attacks in cities close to me. cincinnati, very close to where my daughter lives, and in columbus, where my hot headed number one son lives. no news of closer activity yet.

#80

Politics / Re: amerika

Last post by billy rubin - January 25, 2026, 02:20:06 PM

well, things are a bit fucked up over here.

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