Humans

Archaeology

A taste for wild cereal sowed farming’s spread in ancient Europe

Balkan groups collected and ate wild cereal grains several millennia before domesticated cereals reached Europe.

Health & Medicine

Will animal-to-human organ transplants overcome their complicated history?

The elusive goal of using animal organs for transplants could be within reach, but it’s too soon to tell.

Science & Society

Here are the Top 10 science anniversaries of 2022

Insulin to treat diabetes, the slide rule and the birthdays of Gregor Mendel and Louis Pasteur make the list.

Health & Medicine

50 years ago, researchers thought Americans outgrew marijuana

In the 1970s, it was thought that adults over age 25 may “outgrow” marijuana. Fifty years later, older adults are in on the action.

Psychology

How mindfulness-based training can give elite athletes a mental edge

Mindfulness and acceptance and commitment therapy are two types of training psychologists are using to bolster athletes’ mental health.

Health & Medicine

Antimicrobial resistance is a leading cause of death globally

In more than 70 percent of the 1.27 million deaths caused by antimicrobial resistance, infections didn’t respond to two classes of first-line antibiotics.

Humans

Babies may use saliva sharing to figure out relationships

Actions like sharing bites of food or kissing may cue young children into close bonds, a new study suggests.

Archaeology

Gold and silver tubes in a Russian museum are the oldest known drinking straws

Long metal tubes enabled communal beer drinking more than 5,000 years ago, scientists say.

Genetics

A genetic analysis hints at why COVID-19 can mess with smell

People with some genetic variants close to smell-related genes had an 11 percent higher risk of losing their sense of taste or smell.

Animals

Part donkey, part wild ass, the kunga is the oldest known hybrid bred by humans

Syria’s 4,500-year-old kungas were donkey-wild ass hybrids, genetic analysis reveals, so the earliest known example of humans crossing animal species.

Anthropology

Homo sapiens bones in East Africa are at least 36,000 years older than once thought

Analyses of remnants of a volcanic blast push the age of East Africa’s oldest known H. sapiens fossils at Ethiopia’s Omo site to 233,000 years or more.

Health & Medicine

Omicron forces us to rethink COVID-19 testing and treatments

At-home rapid tests may miss the speedy variant early on, and some treatments, such as some monoclonal antibodies, no longer work.