All Stories by Bruce Bower
- Humans
Taking trophy heads close to home
Members of the prehistoric Nasca culture in southern Peru took trophy heads from their own people rather than from foreigners captured in wars or raids, a new biochemical analysis suggests.
- Humans
Primates get a neural facial
New brain-imaging studies indicate that similar brain areas coordinate face recognition in people, chimpanzees and macaque monkeys, suggesting that a face-sensitive brain system evolved early in primate evolution.
- Archaeology
Tools with handles even more ancient
An analysis of stone tools excavated at a Syrian site indicates that, around 70,000 years ago, Neandertals used a tarlike adhesive to affix sharpened items to handles.
- Animals
Dolphins wield tools of the sea
A long-term study of dolphins living off Australia’s coast finds that a small number of them, mostly females, frequently use sea sponges to forage for fish on the ocean floor.
- Humans
When giving gifts, the price is wrong
Gift givers expect that expensive presents will be appreciated by gift receivers more than inexpensive presents, but three new investigations suggest that that’s not the case.
- Psychology
Recovering memories that never left
New research suggests that some people who recover memories of childhood sexual abuse are prone to false recall, while others are likely to have forgotten earlier recollections of actual abuse.
- Humans
Baby boys may show spatial supremacy
Two new studies suggest that, at 3 to 5 months of age, boys already outperform girls on mental rotation tasks.
- Health & Medicine
Brain reorganizes to make room for math
New research suggests that, as children learn arithmetic, the brain reorganizes dramatically as it shifts from handling only estimates of quantities to attaching precise quantities to symbolic numerals.
- Psychology
Your body is mine
Scientists have developed a technique for inducing an illusion of having swapped one’s own body with someone else’s body, providing a new means for investigating self-identity and body-image disorders.
- Life
Stone Age gal gets hip
Researchers have found an approximately 1-million-year-old fossil pelvis that, in their view, indicates that Homo erectus females gave birth to surprisingly big-brained babies.
- Psychology
A genetic pathway to language disorders
Researchers suspect a newly uncovered regulatory link between two genes contributes to language impairments in a range of developmental disorders.
- Archaeology
An ancient healer reborn
A research team in Israel has uncovered one of the oldest known graves of a shaman. The 12,000-year-old grave hosts a woman’s skeleton surrounded by the remains of unusual animals.
