Podcasts about cambrian period

In the ocean, the Cambrian Period was one of startling evolutionary innovations, but on land, it was barren, with no vegetation of any kind. In this strange world before plants made their way onto land… could you survive?--Eons is a production of Complexly for PBS Digital Studios.If you'd like to support the show, head over to Patreon and pledge for some cool rewards!Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet?FacebookYouTubeTwitterInstagram 

We are transporting  back over 500 million years ago, where we will explore a time when Earth's oceans filled with bizarre and enigmatic creatures, marking the dawn of complex life. From the iconic Burgess Shale fossils to the Cambrian Explosion itself, join me as we uncover the secrets of this pivotal period in Earth's history, where evolution unfolded with an explosion of diversity.References- Amos, J. L. (n.d.). Cambrian Period. National Geographic. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/cambrian- Bagley, M. (2016, May 27). Cambrian Period & Cambrian Explosion: Facts & Information. Live Science. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.livescience.com/28098-cambrian-period.html- Hughes, N. C. (2023, January 6). ,Cambrian Explosion: Life explosion in Cambrian period is an explosion of extant fossils. Science Direct. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/cambrian-period- Kazlev, A. (2002). Palaeos Paleozoic: Cambrian: The Cambrian Period - 1. Palaeos. Retrieved March 22, 2024, from http://palaeos.com/paleozoic/cambrian/cambrian.html- Robison, R. A. , Crick, . Rex E. and Johnson, . Markes E. (2024, March 1). Cambrian Period. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/Cambrian-PeriodMusicUnfolding Plot by Blue Dot SessionsContributorsWritten/Edited/Produced: Kassidy RobertsonThesis Directors: Professor Jeremy Bramblett, and Professor Will DavisThesis Committee: Dr. Hope Klug, and Professor Timothy Gaudin

Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo! This week let's learn about a weird marine worm and its extinct ancestor! Further reading: Eunice aphroditois is a rainbow, terrifying The 20-million-year-old lair of an ambush-predatory worm preserved in northeast Taiwan Here's the money shot of the sand striker with its jaws open, waiting for an animal to get too close. The stripy things are antennae: The fossilized burrow with notes: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This week we're going back in time 20 million years to learn about an animal that lived on the sea floor, although we'll start with its modern relation. It's called the sand striker and new discoveries about it were released in January 2021. Ichnology is the study of a certain type of trace fossil. We talked about trace fossils in episode 103, but basically a trace fossil is something associated with an organism that isn't actually a fossilized organism itself, like fossilized footprints and other tracks. Ichnology is specifically the study of trace fossils caused by animals that disturbed the ground in some way, or if you want to get more technical about it, sedimentary disruption. That includes tracks that were preserved but it also includes a lot of burrows. It's a burrow we're talking about today. Because we often don't know what animal made a burrow, different types of burrows are given their own scientific names. This helps scientists keep them organized and refer to a specific burrow in a way that other scientists can immediately understand. The sand striker's fossilized burrow is named Pennichnus formosae, but in this case we knew about the animal itself before the burrow. The sand striker is a type of polychaete worm, and polychaete worms are incredibly successful animals. They're found in the fossil record since at least the Cambrian Period half a billion years ago and are still common today. They're also called bristle worms because most species have little bristles made of chitin. Almost all known species live in the oceans but some species are extremophiles. This includes species that live near hydrothermal vents where the water is heated to extreme temperatures by volcanic activity and at least one species found in the deepest part of the ocean that's ever been explored, Challenger Deep. A polychaete worm doesn't look like an earthworm. It has segments with a hard exoskeleton and bristles, and a distinct head with antennae. Some species don't have eyes at all but some have sophisticated vision and up to eight eyes. Some can swim, some just float around, some crawl along the seafloor, and some burrow in sand and mud. Some eat small animals while others eat algae or plant material, and some have plume-like appendages they use to filter tiny pieces of food from the water. Basically, there are so many species known—over 10,000, with more being discovered almost every year, alive and extinct—that it's hard to make generalizations about polychaete worms. Most species of polychaete worm are small. The living species of sand striker generally grows around 4 inches long, or 10 centimeters, and longer. We'll come back to its size in a minute. Its exoskeleton, or cuticle, is a beautifully iridescent purple. It doesn't have eyes, instead sensing prey with five antennae. These aren't like insect antennae but look more like tiny tentacles, packed with chemical receptors that help it find prey. The sand striker lives in warm coastal waters and spends most of its time hidden in a burrow in the sand. It's especially common around coral reefs. While it will eat plant material like seaweed, it's mostly an ambush hunter. At night the sand striker remains in its burrow but pokes its head out with its scissor-like mandibles open. When the chemical receptors in its antennae detect a fish or other animal approaching,

If we were to compress Earth's 4.6 billion years of history into one single, ordinary day, the first primitive signs of life would emerge at about four o'clock in the morning. Single-celled organisms appeared early but it was not until half past eight that large quantities of microbes started to grow. The first batch of sea plants would come into being soon after, and twenty minutes later, the first ever school of jellyfish would be born. At about 9:04 at night, the ancient trilobites and other creatures arrived , triggering what is known among biologists as the Cambrian explosion, a great outburst of life in the Cambrian Period. Close to ten at night, the Earth saw its very first signs of vegetation and its first batch of terrestrial animals. At 10:24, the great forests of the Carboniferous Period started covering the entire surface of the Earth, and the first winged insects began dancing in the air. The dinosaurs came just past eleven at night, and later dominated the Earth. Then, they would suddenly vanish in twenty-one minutes, and the era of the mammals would begin. Humans would not enter the scene until just one minute and seventeen seconds to midnight, and all of the documented history of mankind would in fact only span a few seconds long in this countdown.

This week we're going far far back in time to talk about the anomalocaris, a strange looking arthropod from the Cambrian Period. They may look straight out of Star Wars, but they're actually an example of one of the first ever apex predators. Listen to learn more! If you'd like to support the show, please check out our merch store over on Etsy where we sell stickers, postcards, keychains, and hand-made needle-felted ornaments. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a rating and review. To stay up to date and see our weekly episode illustrations, make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Beyond Blathers is hosted and produced by Olivia deBourcier and Sofia Osborne, with art by Olivia deBourcier and music by Max Hoosier. This podcast is not associated with Animal Crossing or Nintendo, we just love this game!

Welcome back to Wiped Out Wednesdays! Today we are talking about the ANOMALOCARIS was a super weird clusterf*ck of an animal that lived around 500 million years ago during the Cambrian Period. This thing was terrifying, weird-looking, but probably tasted delicious! Thank GOD it's Wiped Out though! If you don't like to listen to us you can WATCH US INSTEAD! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ltaca/support

The Devonian Period was for plants what the Cambrian Period was for animals. Land plants really started to experiment with new forms of growth some 380 million years ago which led to the establishment of the first forests on Earth. My guest today is Dr. Chris Barry who was part of the team that recently discovered the oldest fossil evidence of forests. As you are going to hear, these forests were very different from the ones we know and love today. This episode was produced in part by Kathleen, Ethan, Kaylee, Runaway Goldfish, Ryan, Donna, Donica, Chris, Shamora, Alana, Laura, Alice, Sarah, Rachel, Joanna, Griff, Philip, Paul, Matthew, Clark, Bobby, Kate, Steven, Brittney, McMansion Hell, Joey, Catherine, Brandon, Hall, Vegreville Creek and Wetlands Fund, Kevin, Oliver, John, Johansson, Christina, Jared, Hannah, Katy Pye, Brandon, Gwen, Carly, Stephen, Botanical Tours, Moonwort Studios, Liba, Mohsin Kazmi Takes Pictures, doeg, Clifton, Stephanie, Benjamin, Eli, Rachael, Plant By Design, Philip, Brent, Ron, Tim, Homestead Brooklyn, Brodie, Kevin, Sophia, Mark, Rens, Bendix, Irene, Holly, Caitlin, Manuel, Jennifer, Sara, and Margie.

Evolution is taught as fact, but it is not.  The fossil record of the first third of the Cambrian Period wherein 99% of the ancestors of life forms, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and so forth, all appear, is a problem for evolutionary theory.  99% of life forms appearing in 10 million years, less than 3% of the 3.6 billion years life has existed on earth, cannot be explained by evolution.  Nor can evolution explain how DNA, which is essentially digital information, can become more complex over time.  All known increases in digital information and complexity, we must involve intelligence, mind, a creator, or in the case of the existence and complexity of life, apparently God.

How do spiders communicate? Can a spider feel trust? And are they really as scary as they seem? Despite being around since the Cambrian Period, arachnids remain one of the most understudied and misunderstood groups of organisms on earth. In this episode, Jocelyn and Bradley sit down with Dr. Eileen Hebets to unweave some of the mystery surrounding spiders and their eight-legged brethren. Eileen describes the intricacies of spider brains, the many different ways arachnids can communicate, and even how they mate. Eileen also introduces us to her highly acclaimed "Eight-Legged Encounters" outreach exhibit, and the friends discuss the impact of inquiry-based education on public understanding of science generally and arachnids in particular. Finally, Eileen shares what her research on animal communication has taught her about effective science communication, and vice versa. Join us, friends, as we get in touch with our spidey senses and celebrate Arachtober!Dr. Eileen Hebets Links: • The Hebets Research Lab: http://hebetslab.unl.edu/ • Hebets lab movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afr91vyQfWs#action=share • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=dr3GFokAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate • Eight-legged Encounters: https://www.facebook.com/EightLeggedEncounters• https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/unltoday/article/dr-hebets-goes-to-washington-for-eight-legged-encounters/ • https://biosci.unl.edu/eileen-hebets-and-scary-spider-goblet-fire • Using cross-disciplinary knowledge to facilitate advancements in animal communication and science communication research: https://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/221/18/jeb179978.full.pdfContact Science! With Friends (especially if you’re a scientist interested in a lively conversation about your science and science story) at Gmail or Twitter!• Gmail: sciwithfriends@gmail.com• Twitter @SciWithFriendsScience! With Friends Podcast is created and hosted by Jocelyn Bosley (@SciTalker) and Bradley Nordell (@bradleynordell) and Produced by the Basement Creators Network. You can find them at https://www.basementcreators.network/Sound Editing by Vince Ruhl

Life on earth began in the oceans. And it used to be simpler. For the first few billion years, life consisted of microbes that didn't really swim or hunt; they mostly floated and, if they were lucky, bumped into something they could engulf and digest. But that changed during the Cambrian period. Over a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian Explosion, organisms started becoming larger and more complex. For the first time they grew limbs and exoskeletons; intestines and eyes. Animals from this period developed strange body plans that look almost alien to the modern eye. It was an unprecedented surge of biodiversity. But many of the animal groups that emerged during the Cambrian Period died soon after during an extinction event, their bizarre body plans perishing along with them. To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, these were “early experiments in life's history.” Among the survivors of the Cambrian extinction event was metaspriggina, a tiny fish the size of a human thumb. This tiny fish is one of the oldest ancestors of all vertebrate life on earth - including us.Over millions of years and tectonic shifts, Cambrian-era seabeds became modern-day mountains. Today, one of the best places in the world to study fossils from the Cambrian period is at the Burgess Shale fossil deposit, high in the Canadian Rockies. The animals fossilized in the rock were buried quickly in mud that had the right conditions to preserve the soft tissues like brains, organs, and muscles, giving paleontologists a detailed glimpse at some of the first complex life on earth. Scientists have been mulling over the Burgess Shale fossils since they were first excavated in 1909. Stephen Jay Gould was one of those scientists fascinated by the Burgess fossils. He paid attention to the research coming out about them and started wondering what life would look like if a different set of animals had survived and our ancestors had died out. Would humans - or something like us - have ever evolved? Gould thought not. In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, he came up with the ‘tape of life' thought experiment. Gould wrote, “Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” This idea is called Evolutionary Contingency.Not everyone agreed with Gould. Most notably his contemporary Simon Conway Morris, another evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. Simon Conway Morris spent years studying the Burgess Shale, and it was his work that Gould had cited for his book about Evolutionary Contingency. Conway Morris disagreed with Gould's interpretation that human intelligence was a fluke. He wrote his own book in 1998 called The Crucible of Creation and posited that, while life may have looked very different after a replay of the ‘tape of life', consciousness may still have emerged in other forms. He wrote, “There are not an unlimited number of ways of doing something. For all its exuberance, the forms of life are restricted and channeled.” (p. 13) This idea is called Evolutionary Convergence. In August 2018, producer Molly Segal joined a group of paleontologists, including Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum for their biennial dig at the Burgess Shale. Caron believes that Contingency and Convergence both play a role in evolution, their debate has informed discussions about evolution ever since. This episode was produced by Molly and edited by Bethany Denton and Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

Meeting an ancient relative that’s no bigger than your thumb.

Life on earth began in the oceans.  And it used to be simpler. For the first few billion years, life consisted of microbes that didn’t really swim or hunt; they mostly floated and, if they were lucky, bumped into something they could engulf and digest. But that changed during the Cambrian period. Over a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian Explosion, organisms started becoming larger and more complex. For the first time they grew limbs and exoskeletons; intestines and eyes. Animals from this period developed strange body plans that look almost alien to the modern eye. It was an unprecedented surge of biodiversity.  But many of the animal groups that emerged during the Cambrian Period died soon after during an extinction event, their bizarre body plans perishing along with them. To paraphrase the evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, these were “early experiments in life’s history.” Among the survivors of the Cambrian extinction event was metaspriggina, a tiny fish the size of a human thumb. This tiny fish is one of the oldest ancestors of all vertebrate life on earth - including us.Over millions of years and tectonic shifts, Cambrian-era seabeds became modern-day mountains. Today, one of the best places in the world to study fossils from the Cambrian period is at the Burgess Shale fossil deposit, high in the Canadian Rockies. The animals fossilized in the rock were buried quickly in mud that had the right conditions to preserve the soft tissues like brains, organs, and muscles, giving paleontologists a detailed glimpse at some of the first complex life on earth. Scientists have been mulling over the Burgess Shale fossils since they were first excavated in 1909. Stephen Jay Gould was one of those scientists fascinated by the Burgess fossils. He paid attention to the research coming out about them and started wondering what life would look like if a different set of animals had survived and our ancestors had died out. Would humans - or something like us - have ever evolved?  Gould thought not. In his 1989 book Wonderful Life, he came up with the ‘tape of life’ thought experiment. Gould wrote, “Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.” This idea is called Evolutionary Contingency.Not everyone agreed with Gould. Most notably his contemporary Simon Conway Morris, another evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. Simon Conway Morris spent years studying the Burgess Shale, and it was his work that Gould had cited for his book about Evolutionary Contingency. Conway Morris disagreed with Gould’s interpretation that human intelligence was a fluke. He wrote his own book in 1998 called The Crucible of Creation and posited that, while life may have looked very different after a replay of the ‘tape of life’, consciousness may still have emerged in other forms. He wrote, “There are not an unlimited number of ways of doing something. For all its exuberance, the forms of life are restricted and channeled.” (p. 13) This idea is called Evolutionary Convergence. In August 2018, producer Molly Segal joined a group of paleontologists, including Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum for their biennial dig at the Burgess Shale.  Caron believes that Contingency and Convergence both play a role in evolution, their debate has informed discussions about evolution ever since. This episode was produced by Molly and edited by Bethany Denton and Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

Today's Flash Back Friday comes from Episode 103, from August 2012. Jason Hartman is joined by author and World Net Daily staff reporter, Jerome Corsi, for a discussion about abiotic oil, population control, the origins of the ACLU and many other topics. Listen at: www.HolisticSurvival.com. Jerome Corsi has authored many books, including The Great Oil Conspiracy, Where's the Birth Certificate?, Unfit for Command, and The Late Great U.S.A. In the first part of the show, Dr. Corsi shares research about abiotic oil, which is a theory that oil is formed from chemical reactions in the Earth's mantle, a process discovered by the Nazis and suppressed by the U.S. Government. Dr. Corsi says there is abundant naturally occurring oil and natural gas supplies, using as example oil that is seeping up from the Earth's mantle in Saudi Arabia. Jason and Dr. Corsi talk about population control and population growth, how the extreme environmentalists say the Earth cannot sustain its current population. Dr. Corsi says the Earth is not dying; the Earth regenerates and naturally controls population. He explains how liberal tendencies, such as fascism, Marxism, socialism ideals, cause depressions, lead to wars and dividing populations, and are usually combined with eugenics that lead to genocide. Governments won't acknowledge that people do not need to be controlled. They stifle human creativity in the name of spreading the wealth. Dr. Corsi also discusses the origins and intentions of the ACLU, which has resulted in a perversion of liberty, enforcing a kind of socialism under the guise of civil rights. He explores the holes in evolution, referencing the extinction and reappearance of the Cambrian Period in a relatively short geological time period, rather than the millions of years in which Darwinism proposes evolution occurs between extinct species. Dr. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Political Science in 1972. He is currently a Senior Staff Reporter for World Net Daily, where he works as an investigative reporter. He is also a senior managing director at Gilford Securities, a full-service boutique investment firm providing financial services to institutional and retail clients. For 10 years after getting his Ph.D. at Harvard, Dr. Corsi taught in universities, the last being the University of Denver in 1981, and conducted university-based research under federally funded contracts. For nearly 25 years beginning in 1981, Dr. Corsi worked with banks throughout the United States and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. Dr Corsi is an expert on political violence and terrorism. In 1981, he received a Top Secret clearance from the Agency for International Development, where he assisted in providing anti-terrorism training to embassy personnel. In 2004, Dr. Corsi co-authored the #1 New York Times bestseller, Unfit for Command — Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Regnery Publishing Inc., 2004) with swift boat veteran John O'Neill. The success of Unfit for Command permitted Dr. Corsi to make a career change into full-time writing on politics and economics, two fields in which he has considerable expertise and experience. In August 2008, he published The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (New York: Simon and Schuster Threshold Editions), which was a #1 New York Times Bestseller for a month and remained on the NYT Bestseller list for 10 weeks. Dr. Corsi has authored and co-authored several oterh non-fiction books, including titles such as, Where's the Birth Certificate (2011), Showdown with Nuclear Iran (2006), America for Sale (2010), and his newest book, The Great Oil Conspiracy: How the U.S. Government Hid the Nazi Discovery of Abiotic Oil from the American People.

Be prepared, this episode of Trolling with Logic is very science-heavy. But that’s why we love it. Nathan, Cal, and Jenna are joined by none other than Jenna’s brother Fred Bowyer! Fred Bowyer studies at The University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, where he is working in a PhD program specializing in the geochemistry of the Ediacaran Period -- the period lasting from about 635 to 542 million years ago -- which preceded the famous Cambrian Period. Fred provides us with an overview of the research he’s involved with, and how modern geochemical and geophysical techniques and technology have enabled scientists to resolve Darwin’s famous dilemma and come to an understanding of the environmental conditions way back at the dawn of animal life prior to the so-called “Cambrian Explosion.” We talk about what equipment scientists in this field are using, a primer on how fossils form, why pseudoscientific creationist arguments against geological dating techniques are wrong, the question of whether a rise in oxygen precipitate the evolution of animal life in the Cambrian, what dissolving rocks with acid can tell us about prehistoric atmospheres, and more. “Ediacaran Park” may not be as entertaining as Jurassic Park, but hearing from an active researcher in this prehistoric period reminds us of the amazing power and long reach of science and technology to illuminate aspects of the distant past unreachable by earlier generations of scientists.   Links: Andrew H. Knoll and Erik A. Sperling, “Oxygen and Animals in Earth History,” PNAS 111, no. 11 (March 18, 2014): 3907-3908; http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/3907.full.pdf. Fred Bowyer’s profile at ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fred_Bowyer/publications Popular-science books recommended by Fred for those interested in learning more: Douglas H. Erwin, ‘The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity’: https://www.amazon.com/Cambrian-Explosion-Construction-Animal-Biodiversity/dp/1936221039 Andrew H. Knoll, ‘Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth’: https://www.amazon.com/Life-Young-Planet-Evolution-Princeton/dp/069116553X Donald E. Canfield, ‘Oxygen: A Four Billion Year History’: https://www.amazon.com/Oxygen-Billion-History-Science-Essentials/dp/0691168369 Tim Lenton and Andrew Watson, ‘Revolutions that Made the Earth’: https://www.amazon.com/Revolutions-that-Made-Earth-Lenton/dp/0199673462

2017-04-24 Special EnglishThis is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.Beijing has put a new medical care reform plan into effect, bringing an end to medicine price markups.More than 3,600 medical institutions are involved in the reform and all of them have abolished the medicine price markups. That's according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning.It is estimated that the cost of treatment per outpatient will be reduced by around 5 percent on average thanks to cuts in medicine prices. There will be an average cost increase of 2.5 percent for inpatient treatment due to the growth of certain service charges.Community hospitals and medical institutions have been given the same access to the medicines usually prescribed in higher-level hospitals, so that patients can have more choices.Marking up medicine prices is a practice that has been adopted by most public hospitals in China since the 1950s. It allows hospitals to sell drugs with markups usually at a rate of 15 percent above the drugs' tag prices.The reform aims to effectively motivate medical staff to pay more attention to the medical service they are providing, and further improve the doctor-patient relationship.This is Special English.China has launched its largest operation to control air pollution in the northern regions. The operation has sent more than 5,600 inspectors to push the areas to meet ambitious pollution reduction targets.Unlike the nationwide inspections conducted last year, the yearlong, intensified inspection is being led by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.The inspectors will keep a spotlight on governments and companies in 28 major cities which are susceptible to heavy smog.Inspectors will check important areas including governments' implementation of air pollution control efforts. They will also shut down small plants with high emissions.Through the inspection, the ministry will push the governments and companies to fully implement measures to tackle air pollution.The ministry will closely watch the regions with pollution problems and stick with them until all the pollution issues are resolved.During a separate inspection, officials checked 450 companies and government departments. The inspection team found 280 violations, including companies that falsified monitoring data or discharged excessive pollutants.You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.A recent cooperation deal between China and Kenya has become an important step for China's nuclear power technology to go global. The China General Nuclear Power Corporation announced recently that the company has signed a nuclear power training cooperation framework agreement with the Kenya Nuclear Electricity Board.Under the deal, China's Hualong One reactor is expected to be applied in Africa.The 1,000-megawatt water reactor was developed by the China General Nuclear Power Corporation and the China National Nuclear Corporation. It has reached the highest international safety standards to prevent leakage of radioactive materials and resist earthquakes.The China General Nuclear Power Corporation has formed a joint venture with Electricite de France SA to develop the Bradwell nuclear power plant in the UK, as well as to fund and design the reactor.The British government started an assessment of the reactor design in January. The process is expected to take around five years.Observers say there is a high possibility that the reactor design will pass the UK's approval process.This is Special English.Chinese scientists have extracted a medicinal compound from a natural herb called thunder god vine, which targets cell metabolism and could help tackle obesity.Celastrol, extracted from thunder god vine, and artemisinin, developed from sweet wormwood, are among five herbal compounds believed to have the most potential to treat illnesses where no cure has been discovered, including cancer.The discovery of artemisinin won Chinese scientist Tu Youyou a Nobel Prize in 2015.The research team was led by Zhang Xiaokun, professor with the College of Medicine at Xiamen University. It found that celastrol from the thunder god vine can alleviate inflammation.The team carried out the research on mice. The study found that celastrol could effectively control weight increases in mice feeding on high fat food.The research paper was published in science journal Molecular Cell on April 6.Scientists will continue to study how celastrol regulates metabolism to explore new drugs, with low toxicity and high efficiency, to help people lose weight.You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has earmarked 10 million yuan, roughly 1.4 million U.S. dollars, for the research and development of an advanced artificial intelligence processor.The deep learning processor chip, the "Cambrian", is expected to become the world's first processor that simulates human nerve cells to conduct deep learning.The program is named after the Cambrian Period, which marked a rapid diversification of life forms on earth. Scientists expect that the processor will spearhead a new era in artificial intelligence.The investment will be used in basic research areas to explore the structure and algorithm for the next generation of artificial intelligence. The project also aims to lay a foundation for China's ambition in the global chip market.The funds will also be used to promote and publicize the research.Google's artificial intelligence program AlphaGo needs huge power and large servers to operate. The Cambrian aims to perform at the same level but using only one watt of power. The processor will have the size of a smartphone or a watch.This is Special English.Industry insiders say the planned Xiong-an New Area in Hebei province is expected to bring tourism opportunities to a large wetland area and to the province as a whole.China announced a decision to set up the new area to boost coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province.Over the following three days, during the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, the Baiyangdian Lake tourist area received 18,000 visitors. Tourism income reached 16 million yuan, roughly 2.4 million US dollars. Both figures represented a 260 percent increase compared with last year.The lake is one of North China's largest freshwater wetlands. It is located in Anxin County, which is part of the new area.An online travel service provider said the new area has the basic infrastructure for attracting tourists. It has adequate tourism resources and easy transport. The plan of the new area has attracted the attention of people from across the country to go for a visit.Bookings on the website during the holiday tripled that of last year. Tourists mainly came from neighboring Beijing and Shandong province. There are also people from farther afield, including Shanghai and Guangdong Province.You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to crienglish.com. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. Now the news continues.A woman from the Philippines has become the first person to receive a residence permit designed for foreigners providing housekeeping service in Shanghai. The event occurred in Shanghai's Pudong district, which houses more than 300 Fortune 500 companies and is home to the Pilot Free Trade Zone in the country.Liu Chen is a Chinese American and president of the Shanghai Affinity Biopharmaceutical Company. Liu applied for the one-year residence permit on March 14 for the housemaid he hired. Two weeks later, she obtained the permit.More than 20 foreign housemaids have received their residence permits in Shanghai. Liu's was the only case that has been made public.The permission for foreign housemaids is one of the measures Shanghai has unveiled since July 2015 to attract talented foreigners as the city tries to build itself into a global technological innovation hub by 2030.This is Special English.Education experts say Children should have more opportunities to participate in study tours or other outdoor activities only if their safety is guaranteed.In developed countries, including the United States and Japan, study tours such as summer camps are key activities and are always the source of unforgettable memories. That's according to Sun Yunxiao, chief expert of the China Youth and Children Research Center. Sun says that in China, young people are having less opportunity to enjoy such activities because schools and parents are cutting down on them for security concerns.In recent years, accidents in which children were killed or injured while participating in school outdoor activities have been reported by the media. The events raised concerns among parents. A vice chairman of the Chinese Society of Education said a test-oriented education is also part of the reason for the shrinking number of study tours.Another expert says student workloads are heavy, leaving them little time for traveling.In December, 11 ministries in China jointly released a guideline, stating that study tours will become part of the curriculum system in primary and middle schools nationwide.You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. A new system is being introduced in southern China's Guangdong that gives parents and students more of a say over the designs of school uniforms.The move was put forward in a document jointly published by the province's education department, the industry and commerce administration, as well as the quality and technology administration.Manufacturers will be invited to showcase their wares in schools, but the final decision on which uniform should be adopted will be decided by a poll.Students and parents can also offer suggestions on how manufacturers can further improve their designs and the materials used for the uniforms.The price, design and materials used in school uniforms are decided by local education departments alone. The new plan allows different schools to have different styles of uniform.This is Special English.Macao has officially started its application for a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network as a City of Gastronomy.Macao has officially applied to become one of the most popular choices for food and restaurants, which will add another reputation to the city.Macao's Tourism Office listed the application as one of four major goals in 2017. It even set up a special committee in charge of the issue.Officials say that if Macao is successfully designated as a UNESCO gastronomy city, it will add a significant international brand for Macao with far-reaching significance. It will also serve as a powerful impetus to the sustainable development of Macao's economy.Macao held an "International Gastronomy Forum" in November as a warm-up before it officially applies for the branding.This is Special English.Spanning 1,100 meters across a river in southwest China's Sichuan Province, a main cable backstay bridge has been successfully installed. The bridge, on the Luding River, is part of an expressway linking two cities in the province.This is the first suspension bridge in the province that has been built in a highly active seismic zone with complicated wind field and a large span. Around 34,000 steel cables will be used in the construction. The total length will reach 60,000 kilometers if all the cables are laid together in a single line, which is equivalent to 1.5 times of the circumference of the earth.The bridge has dual carriage way with four lanes of traffic in each direction, allowing vehicles to travel at 80 kilometers per hour.A drone was also used during the construction of the bridge.（全文见周六微信。）

Learn how geology can help you learn what the Earth looked like BILLIONS of years ago – and how it has changed since! In this episode we explore The Cambrian Period!

The Burgess Shale is probably the world's most famous lagerstätte (site of special preservation). Discovered in 1909 on Mt. Stephen, in the Canadian Rockies of British Colombia, Canada, this locality provided an early representation of the true biodiversity of the Cambrian Period. For decades, discoveries from this site have helped palaeontologists better understand the 'Cambrian Explosion' and the origins of modern lineages. Since that time, many more early lagerstätten have been discovered, so we asked Prof. Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge, if this well-studied locality still holds its relevance to modern palaeontology.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cambrian period when there was an explosion of life on Earth. In the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada, there is an outcrop of limestone shot through with a seam of fine dark shale. A sudden mudslide into shallow water some 550 million years ago means that a startling array of wonderful organisms has been preserved within it. Wide eyed creatures with tentacles below and spines on their backs, things like flattened rolls of carpet with a set of teeth at one end, squids with big lobster-like arms. There are thousands of them and they seem to testify to a time when evolution took a leap and life on this planet suddenly went from being small, simple and fairly rare to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse. It happened in the Cambrian Period and it's known as the Cambrian Explosion.But if this is the great crucible of life on Earth, what could have caused it? How do the strange creatures relate to life as we see it now? And what does the Cambrian Explosion tell us about the nature of evolution?With Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, Cambridge University; Richard Corfield, Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research, Open University; Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology, University of Leeds.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Cambrian period when there was an explosion of life on Earth. In the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia in Canada, there is an outcrop of limestone shot through with a seam of fine dark shale. A sudden mudslide into shallow water some 550 million years ago means that a startling array of wonderful organisms has been preserved within it. Wide eyed creatures with tentacles below and spines on their backs, things like flattened rolls of carpet with a set of teeth at one end, squids with big lobster-like arms. There are thousands of them and they seem to testify to a time when evolution took a leap and life on this planet suddenly went from being small, simple and fairly rare to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse. It happened in the Cambrian Period and it's known as the Cambrian Explosion.But if this is the great crucible of life on Earth, what could have caused it? How do the strange creatures relate to life as we see it now? And what does the Cambrian Explosion tell us about the nature of evolution?With Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, Cambridge University; Richard Corfield, Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research, Open University; Jane Francis, Professor of Palaeoclimatology, University of Leeds.