News
- Anthropology
Neandertals take out their small blades
Excavations of Neandertal artifacts have yielded a trove of thin, double-edged stone blades that researchers usually regard as the work of Stone Age people who lived much later.
- Anthropology
Ancient islanders get a leg up
A new analysis of bones from a tiny evolutionary cousin of people found on a Pacific island indicates that these late Stone Age individuals carried a lot of weight on short frames and had extremely strong legs.
- Health & Medicine
An aging protein?
The defective protein that, when defective, causes a premature-aging disease may also play a role in normal aging.
- Astronomy
Crust on a star
By analyzing X rays generated by the rumblings of a neutron star 40,000 light-years from Earth, astronomers have estimated the thickness of the dense star's crust.
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Blood Sucker: Like the adult heart, the developing heart takes advantage of suction
The embryonic heart works more like the adult heart than scientists had long assumed.
- Health & Medicine
Defending against a Deadly Foe: Vaccine forestalls fearsome virus
A single injection of an experimental vaccine prevents infection by the lethal Marburg virus in monkeys.
- Astronomy
Big Breakup: That’s the way the comet crumbles
Scores of telescopes are watching the continuing breakup of a comet as it nears the sun.
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Boyish Brains: Plastic chemical alters behavior of female mice
Exposure to the main ingredient of polycarbonate plastics can alter brain formation in female mouse fetuses and make the lab animals, later in life, display a typically male behavior pattern.
- Animals
No Early Birds: Migrators can’t catch advancing caterpillars
Pied flycatcher numbers are dwindling in places where climate change has knocked the birds' migration out of sync with the food-supply peak on their breeding grounds.
- Anthropology
Evolutionary Back Story: Thoroughly modern spine supported human ancestor
Bones from a spinal column discovered at a nearly 1.8-million-year-old site support the controversial possibility that ancient human ancestors spoke to one another.
- Earth
Tainted by Cleanser: Antimicrobial agent persists in sludge
About 76 percent of a commonly used antimicrobial agent exits sewage-treatment plants as a component of the sludge that's often used as a farm fertilizer.
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Wired for math
The same neural circuits that adults use to perform complex calculations are already at work in preschoolers doing basic math.
