Valerie Varnuska | Blogspot

Longtime Westbury, NY, resident Valerie Varnuska loves learning about the natural world. To this end, Valerie Varnuska is fascinated by sciences such as geology and paleontology. It’s well-established that numerous animals, from humans to insects, feature a bilaterian body plan. This means that they have a back, stomach, head, and tail that are organized as mirror images of one another. Due to this orientation, organisms are capable of moving in a purposeful way, thus establishing the development of bilateral symmetry as an important stepping stone in animals’ evolutionary history. The oldest animals who displayed this type of bilateral symmetry are called bilaterians . Based on studies of modern animals, evolutionary biologists believe these bilaterians have basic sensory organs and are relatively simple creatures. However, fossilized remains of the animal were difficult to find. Rather, paleontologists have exclusively studied fossilized burrows created in Ediacaran-period de...

A lifelong resident of Westbury, NY, Valerie Varnuska enjoys exploring the nature trails near her home. In addition, Valerie Varnuska has an interest in astronomy and frequently takes time to view the night skies. Astronomers recently made a new discovery, based on data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, about what happens to stars. Looking at stars in the Fornax Cluster about 60 million light years from Earth, astronomers found that some stars have the potential to be ejected from their original galaxy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory recorded data from the Fornax Cluster over a 16-year period. Astronomers noted that the nonsymmetrical recoil blast from a dying supernova creates enough force to knock the resulting neutron stars out of their home galaxy, sometimes even taking companion stars in their orbit with them.  The research team spotted more than two dozen potential star pairs that were likely ejected from their galaxies. The findings were published in the May 2019 ed...

A member of the Westbury, NY, community, Valerie Varnuska is a science enthusiast. Valerie Varnuska maintains a particular interest in the field of paleontology. In addition to dinosaurs and other ancient animals and plants, paleontologists study the fossil record for clues about the evolution of the human species. In January 2019, a new report shed some light on an unexpected discovery made by researchers last summer. In the discovery, reported in August 2018, scientists announced that they had identified an ancient human specimen that appeared to be a hybrid between two distinct hominid species, Neanderthals and Denisovans. The announcement, the first evidence that these early species had ever commingled, sent ripples through the scientific community. A more recent announcement suggests that this hybrid may not have been a unique case. Using artificial intelligence and advanced statistical methods, scientists from several institutes examined the genome of a group of Asian people a...