Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Archaeology
Clovis hunters’ reputation as mammoth killers takes a hit
Early Americans’ stone points were best suited to butchering the huge beasts’ carcasses, scientists contend.
- Health & Medicine
‘Blastoids’ made of stem cells offer a new way to study fertility
Newly created “blastoids” could help with research on nonhormonal contraceptives and fertility treatments.
- Health & Medicine
The coronavirus may cause fat cells to miscommunicate, leading to diabetes
Researchers are homing in on a surprising cause of high blood sugar in COVID-19 patients and possibly what to do about it.
- Archaeology
Arctic hunter-gatherers were advanced ironworkers more than 2,000 years ago
Swedish excavations uncover furnaces and fire pits from a big metal operation run by a small-scale society, a new study finds.
