Other Sciences News

Two enormous blobs of solid, superheated material located at the base of Earth’s mantle affect the underlying liquid outer core. Image credit: Biggin et al., doi: 10.1038/s41561-025-01910-1.

Two Enormous Blobs of Superheated Material Help Shape Earth’s Magnetic Field

Feb 3, 2026 by News Staff

Two immense, ultrahot rock structures located at the base of Earth’s mantle, around 2,900 km beneath Africa and the Pacific, have been shaping Earth’s...

Hun Rho et al. introduce plasmonic colloidal supraballs -- solution-processable assemblies of gold nanospheres -- as a robust and versatile platform for broadband solar energy harvesting. Image credit: Hun Rho et al., doi: 10.1021/acsami.5c23149.

New Nanomaterial Design Could Help Solar Tech Harness More Sunlight

Feb 2, 2026 by News Staff

By using gold nanospheres engineered to capture light across the solar spectrum, researchers at Korea University took a step toward lowering barriers to...

Early Earth. Image credit: Peter Sawyer / Smithsonian Institution.

Massive Undersea Volcanism May Explain Frequent Extinctions in Triassic Period

Jan 29, 2026 by News Staff

A team of geologists from China and Australia has found evidence that episodic eruptions from vast marine large igneous provinces (LIPs) drove repeated...

Artist’s reconstruction of Xigou tool-hafting. Image credit: Hulk Yuan, IVPP.

China’s Xigou Site Yields Evidence of Advanced Stone Tool Technology

Jan 27, 2026 by News Staff

Technological innovations in Africa and Western Europe in the later part of the Middle Pleistocene signal the behavioral complexity of hominin populations....

Vaccinium angustifolium. Image credit: Σ64 / CC BY 3.0.

Wild Blueberries Show Promise in Fight against Heart Disease and Diabetes

Jan 27, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Wild blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) are North American perennial plants rich in polyphenols, including flavonoids, beneficial to human health. A...

Díaz-Muñoz et al. identified therapeutically tractable mechanisms involved in the control of gut motility, including a previously unrecognized role for vitamin B1. Image credit: Hillman et al., doi: 10.1264/jsme2.ME17017 / CC BY 4.0.

Genes Tie Gut Motility to Surprising Nutrient: Vitamin B1

Jan 26, 2026 by News Staff

Analyzing data from more than 268,000 people, researchers found that genes involved in thiamine (vitamin B1) metabolism play a key role in gut motility,...

The red knot (Calidris canutus), juvenile, near Gourinet, Brittany, France. Image credit: Stephan Sprinz / CC BY 4.0.

Fossil Shorebirds Tell New Story about Climate Change in Australia

Jan 21, 2026 by News Staff

Shorebirds are widespread birds whose dependence on coastal and wetland environments makes them effective paleoenvironmental indicators. Wading shorebirds...

Paranthropus boisei. Image credit: © Roman Yevseyev.

2.6-Million-Year-Old Fossil from Ethiopia Shows Paranthropus Hominins Were Widespread

Jan 21, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

The newly-discovered fossil — a 2.6-million-year-old partial lower jaw found in the Afar region of Ethiopia — represents the first known specimen...

Tectonic Plate Movements, Not Volcanoes, Drove Major Climate Shifts Over 540 Million Years

Jan 20, 2026 by News Staff

New research challenges conventional wisdom by demonstrating that mid-ocean ridges and continental rifts, not volcanic eruptions, played the central role...

Operating principle and implementation of MASI. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-65661-8.

New Sensor Rewrites Rules of Optical Imaging

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Inspired by a technique that allowed astronomers to image a black hole, scientists at the University of Connecticut developed a lens-free image sensor...

Facial reconstruction of Homo habilis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes.

2-Million-Year-Old Skeleton Offers Clearest Look Yet at Homo habilis

Jan 15, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A newly-described partial skeleton from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya is giving paleoanthropologists their most complete picture yet of Homo...

Leang Bulu Bettue in the Maros-Pangkep karst area of South Sulawesi. Image credit: Burhan et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0337993.

Enigmatic Hominins May Have Overlapped with Homo sapiens on Sulawesi

Jan 13, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

At Leang Bulu Bettue, a rock-shelter in the Maros-Pangkep karst region on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, paleoanthropologists have uncovered one of...

The 60,000-year-old backed microlith from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: (A) buphanidrine and (B) epibuphanisine detected in a sample from the microlith; (C) the microlith showing the reddish poisonous adhesive residue still adhering to the dorsal backed portion of the tool. Image credit: Isaksson et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adz3281.

60,000-Year-Old Poisoned Arrowheads Found in South Africa

Jan 8, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists have identified traces of two toxic plant alkaloids — buphandrine and epibuphanisine — on artifacts from Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter...

773,000-Year-Old Hominin Fossils from Morocco Offer New Clues to Roots of Homo sapiens

Jan 7, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

The hominin fossils discovered in the Grotte à Hominidés at Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca, Morocco, are providing new evidence about the deep origins...

Google’s quantum computer. Image credit: Google.

Breakthrough in Quantum Computing: First Secure Method to Back Up Quantum Information

Jan 7, 2026 by News Staff

Scientists at the University of Waterloo and Kyushu University have developed the first method to create redundant, encrypted copies of qubits —...

The Voynich manuscript, folio 67r. Image credit: Beinecke Library, Yale University.

Historically Plausible Cipher Recreates Statistical Signature of Voynich Manuscript

Jan 6, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

The Voynich manuscript — often called the most mysterious manuscript in the world — has eluded attempts to understand its origin, nature, and...

Reconstruction of Sahelanthropus tchadensis. Image credit: University of Silesia.

7-Million-Year-Old Sahelanthropus Fossils Bolster Case for Earliest Upright Walking

Jan 5, 2026 by Sergio Prostak

For more than two decades, Sahelanthropus tchadensis — a very early (6.7 to 7.2 million years old) hominin species discovered in Chad in 2001 —...

DeCasien et al. provide the first empirical data showing the direct role the gut microbiome plays in shaping differences in the way the brain functions across different primate species. Image credit: DeCasien et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2426232122.

Gut Microbes Played Role in Evolution of Human Brain, New Study Suggests

Jan 5, 2026 by News Staff

Compared to other primates, humans have remarkably large brains relative to their body sizes. The resultant high demands for glucose may have been supported...

An artist’s concept of a Penghu Denisovan walking under the bright Sun during the Pleistocene of Taiwan. Image credit: Cheng-Han Sun.

Researchers Sequence Genome of 200,000-Year-Old Denisovan

Jan 2, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team led by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology scientists has generated the high-quality genome assembly of a Denisovan using...