1978 in science

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The year 1978 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Contents

Astronomy and space science

Computer science

Geophysics

History of science

Paleontology

Physiology and medicine

Awards

Births

Deaths

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human evolution</span> Evolutionary process leading to anatomically modern humans

Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family, which includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of human evolution involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Rivest</span> American cryptographer

Ronald Linn Rivest is a cryptographer and computer scientist whose work has spanned the fields of algorithms and combinatorics, cryptography, machine learning, and election integrity. He is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a member of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early modern human</span> Old Stone Age Homo sapiens

Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish Homo sapiens that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans, from extinct archaic human species. This distinction is useful especially for times and regions where anatomically modern and archaic humans co-existed, for example, in Paleolithic Europe. Among the oldest known remains of Homo sapiens are those found at the Omo-Kibish I archaeological site in south-western Ethiopia, dating to about 233,000 to 196,000 years ago, the Florisbad site in South Africa, dating to about 259,000 years ago, and the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, dated about 315,000 years ago.

<i>Homo</i> Genus of hominins that includes humans and their closest extinct relatives

Homo is the genus that emerged in the genus Australopithecus that encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens, along with several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely related to modern humans, including Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of Homo is Homo habilis with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably sister to Australopithecus africanus, which itself had previously split from the lineage of Pan, the chimpanzees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice and Bob</span> Characters used in cryptography and science literature

Alice and Bob are fictional characters commonly used as placeholders in discussions about cryptographic systems and protocols, and in other science and engineering literature where there are several participants in a thought experiment. The Alice and Bob characters were invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in their 1978 paper "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-key Cryptosystems". Subsequently, they have become common archetypes in many scientific and engineering fields, such as quantum cryptography, game theory and physics. As the use of Alice and Bob became more widespread, additional characters were added, sometimes each with a particular meaning. These characters do not have to refer to people; they refer to generic agents which might be different computers or even different programs running on a single computer.

<i>Homo floresiensis</i> Archaic human from Flores, Indonesia

Homo floresiensis( also known as "Flores Man") is an extinct species of small archaic human that inhabited the island of Flores, Indonesia, until the arrival of modern humans about 50,000 years ago.

<i>Homo rhodesiensis</i> Species of primate (fossil)

Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from Broken Hill mine in Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.

The year 1978 in archaeology involved some significant events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of human evolution</span> Chronological outline of major events in the development of the human species

The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the evolutionary lineage of the modern human species, Homo sapiens, throughout the history of life, beginning some 4 billion years ago down to recent evolution within H. sapiens during and since the Last Glacial Period.

Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaic humans</span> Extinct relatives of modern humans

A number of varieties of Homo are grouped into the broad category of archaic humans in the period that precedes and is contemporary to the emergence of the earliest early modern humans around 300 ka. Among the earliest remains of H. sapiens are Omo-Kibish I from southern Ethiopia, the remains from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka). The term typically includes H. antecessor, H. bodoensis, Denisovans (H. denisova), H. ergaster, H. habilis, H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), H. naledi, Neanderthals, and H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jebel Irhoud</span> Archaeological site in Morocco

Jebel Irhoud or Adrar n Ighoud, is an archaeological site located just north of the locality known as Tlet Ighoud, approximately 50 km (30 mi) south-east of the city of Safi in Morocco. It is noted for the hominin fossils that have been found there since the discovery of the site in 1960. Originally thought to be Neanderthals, the specimens have since been assigned to Homo sapiens and, as reported in 2017, have been dated to roughly 300,000 years ago.

Pappalysin-1, also known as pregnancy-associated plasma protein A, and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-4 protease is a protein encoded by the PAPPA gene in humans. PAPPA is a secreted protease whose main substrate is insulin-like growth factor binding proteins. Pappalysin-1 is also used in screening tests for Down syndrome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hominidae</span> Family of primates

The Hominidae, whose members are known as the great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo ; Gorilla ; Pan ; and Homo, of which only modern humans remain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florisbad Skull</span> Hominin fossil

The Florisbad Skull is an important human fossil of the early Middle Stone Age, representing either late Homo heidelbergensis or early Homo sapiens. It was discovered in 1932 by T. F. Dreyer at the Florisbad site, Free State Province, South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recent African origin of modern humans</span> "Out of Africa" theory of the early migration of humans

In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans is the dominant model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. It follows the early expansions of hominins out of Africa, accomplished by Homo erectus and then Homo neanderthalensis.

Katerina Harvati is a Greek paleoanthropologist and expert in human evolution. She specializes in the broad application of 3-D geometric morphometric and virtual anthropology methods to paleoanthropology. Since 2009, she is full professor and director of Paleoanthropology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. From 2020-2023 she was Director of the Institute for Archaeological Sciences and since 2023 she is Director of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Misliya Cave</span>

Misliya Cave, also known as the "Brotzen Cave" after Fritz Brotzen, who first described it in 1927, is a collapsed cave at Mount Carmel, Israel, containing archaeological layers from the Lower Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic periods. The site is significant in paleoanthropology for the discovery of what were from 2018 to 2019 considered to be the earliest known remains attributed to Homo sapiens outside Africa, dated to 185,000 years ago. Since the time of its discovery in 2011, Jebel Faya, in the United Arab Emirates, had been considered to be the oldest settlement of anatomically-modern humans outside Africa, with its deepest assemblage being dated to 125,000 years ago.

Apidima Cave is a complex of five caves four small caves located on the western shore of Mani Peninsula in Southern Greece. A systematic investigation of the cave has yielded Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils from the Palaeolithic era.

References

  1. Fountain, J. W.; Larson, S. M. (1978). "Saturn's ring and nearby faint satellites". Icarus . 36 (1): 92–106. Bibcode:1978Icar...36...92F. doi:10.1016/0019-1035(78)90076-3.
  2. Rivest, R.; Shamir, A.; Adleman, L. (1978). "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems" (PDF). Communications of the ACM . 21 (2): 120–126. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.607.2677 . doi:10.1145/359340.359342. S2CID   2873616. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-01-27. Retrieved 2012-01-28.
  3. Byerlee, J. D. (1978). "Friction of rocks". Pure and Applied Geophysics. 116 (4–5): 615–626. Bibcode:1978PApGe.116..615B. doi:10.1007/BF00876528. S2CID   128666327.
  4. ISBN   0-333-24827-9.
  5. Harvati, Katerina; Röding, Carolin; Bosman, Abel M.; Karakostis, Fotios A.; Grün, Rainer; Stringer, Chris; Karkanas, Panagiotis; Thompson, Nicholas C.; Koutoulidis, Vassilis; Moulopoulos, Lia A.; Gorgoulis, Vassilis G.; Kouloukoussa, Mirsini (2019). "Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia". Nature . 571 (7766): 500–504. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1376-z. PMID   31292546. S2CID   195873640.
  6. "1978: First 'test tube baby' born". On This Day. BBC News. 1978-07-25. Archived from the original on 2007-12-21. Retrieved 2013-12-18.
  7. Hauschka, P. V.; Reid. M. L. (1978). "Timed appearance of a calcium-binding protein containing gamma-carboxyglutamic acid in developing chick bone". Developmental Biology . 65 (2): 426–34. doi:10.1016/0012-1606(78)90038-6. PMID   680371.
  8. "First Successful Laboratory Production of Human Insulin Announced". News Release. Genentech. 1978-09-06. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  9. Tof, Ilanit (1994). "Recombinant DNA Technology in the Synthesis of Human Insulin". Little Tree. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  10. Pitt, D.; Hopkins, I. (1978). "A syndrome of mental retardation, wide mouth and intermittent overbreathing". Australian Paediatric Journal. 14 (3): 182–184. doi:10.1111/jpc.1978.14.3.182. PMID   728011. S2CID   45629810.
  11. Bendet, Ia. A.; Morozov, S. M.; Skumin, V. A. (1980). "Psychological aspects of the rehabilitation of patients after the surgical treatment of heart defects" Психологические аспекты реабилитации больных после хирургического лечения пороков сердца [Psychological aspects of the rehabilitation of patients after the surgical treatment of heart defects]. Kardiologiia (in Russian). 20 (6): 45–51. PMID   7392405. Archived from the original on 2017-09-05. Retrieved 2017-07-12.
  12. "Skumin syndrome". wikidata.org. Archived from the original on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 30 January 2023.