Other Sciences News

Ancient Sumer’s Rise Was Driven by Interplay of Rivers and Tides, Archaeologists Say

The impression of a cylinder seal from the Uruk period, around 3100 BCE. Image credit: Louvre Museum.
Sep 2, 2025 by News Staff

New research introduces a paleoenvironmental model in which tidal dynamics influenced the earliest development of agriculture and sociopolitical complexity in Sumer. The impression of a cylinder seal from the Uruk period, around 3100 BCE. Image credit: Louvre Museum. The earliest network of city-states, closely knit by shared cultural traditions and economic interests, emerged around 5,000 years ago in southern Mesopotamia. Collectively referred to...

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Kartar et al. suggest that circuitries supporting the integration of interoceptive representations and processing of affective memories are putative neurobiological substrates of HVB-induced ASCs. Image credit: Ram Jain.

Study: Breathwork While Listening to Music May Induce Blissful State in Practitioners

Sep 1, 2025 by News Staff

In a new study, high ventilation breathwork while listening to music was associated with reports of blissful states and reduced negative emotions, accompanied...

Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid that lived in Africa more then 4 million years ago. Illustration by Arturo Asensio, via Quo.es.

New Research Reveals How Reshaping Pelvis Helped Human Ancestors Walk Upright

Aug 27, 2025 by News Staff

The pelvis is often called the keystone of upright locomotion. More than any other part of our lower body, it has been radically altered over millions...

The fossilized teeth of Camarasaurus from the Morrison Formation in the United States. Image credit: Sauriermuseum Aathal.

Scientists Reconstruct Mesozoic Carbon Dioxide Levels and Photosynthesis from Dinosaur Tooth Enamel

Aug 26, 2025 by News Staff

The atmosphere of Earth during the Mesozoic era, between 252 and 66 million years ago, contained far more carbon dioxide than it does today and total photosynthesis...

A group of Neanderthals in a cave. Image credit: Tyler B. Tretsven.

Paleoanthropologists Discover Earliest Evidence of Human-Neanderthal Interbreeding

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists from Tel Aviv University, the Université de Liège and France’s Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle say they have found a combination...

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

Denisovan DNA May Have Helped Ancient Humans Survive in Americas

Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

Thousands of years ago, ancient Homo sapiens undertook a treacherous journey, crossing hundreds of km of ice over the Bering Strait to the unknown world...

This year’s ozone hole over Antarctica is one of the largest in recent years. Image credit: ESA.

Earth Will Warm More Than Expected Due to Future Changes in Ozone, Study Suggests

Aug 21, 2025 by News Staff

While banning ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs has helped the ozone layer to recover, when combined with increased air pollution the impact of ozone...

Wretlind et al. aimed to investigate sex-specific single lipids associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Image credit: Wretlind et al., doi: 10.1002/alz.70512.

Omega Fatty Acids Could Protect against Alzheimer’s Disease in Women

Aug 20, 2025 by News Staff

New research demonstrates that associations between various lipids and Alzheimer’s disease — a devastating neurological disease that disproportionately...

Gopaulchan et al. established the previously suggested role of pH and temperature changes as robust predictors of chocolate flavor characteristics. Image credit: Sci.News.

Microbiota Composition, pH and Temperature Influence Key Flavor Attributes of Premium Chocolate

Aug 19, 2025 by News Staff

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) bean fermentation is a spontaneous process involving interactions between various factors that contribute to the final flavors...

Liu et al. found that compared to non-coffee drinkers, adults who drank moderate amounts (1.5 to 3.5 cups per day) of unsweetened coffee or sugar-sweetened coffee were less likely to die during a 7-year follow up period. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Caffeine in the Morning Boosts Mood, New Study Suggests

Aug 18, 2025 by Natali Anderson

New research indicates that caffeine consumption is associated with subsequent increases in positive affect, and this association is strongest within the...

Chemical structure of the cyclo[48]carbon [4]catenan. Image credit: Harry Anderson.

Chemists Synthesize New Carbon Allotrope

Aug 15, 2025 by News Staff

Carbon can exist in different forms — called allotropes — giving it completely different properties from color to shape to hardness. For example,...

Forensic facial reconstruction of another Australopithecus species - A. afarensis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Early Homo and Australopithecus Co-Existed in Ethiopia before 2.5 Million Years Ago

Aug 13, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

New hominin fossils recovered from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area in the Afar region of Ethiopia suggest the presence of early Homo at 2.78 and...

Velazquez-Arcelay et al. found that genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the propensity of some people today to be early risers, the sort of people who are more comfortable getting up and going to bed earlier. Image credit: Holger Neumann / Neanderthal Museum.

Study: Genetic Variant Inherited from Neanderthals Reduces Activity of Key Muscle Enzyme

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

The Neanderthal variant in AMPD1 decreases its enzymatic activity by 25% in lab-produced proteins and by up to 80% in the muscles of genetically engineered...

Primates historically transitioned across diverse climates: (A) transition between the temperate (top), arid (left), tropical (bottom), and cold (right), main climates, for all primates; arrow size represents the proportion of phylogenetic branches with the respective transitions; (B) climatic transitions for early primates, who were living between 65 and 47.8 million years ago; (C) climatic transitions for species that were living between 47.8 and 23.03 million years ago; (D) climatic transitions for species that were living from 23.03 million years ago to the present. Image credit: Avaria-Llautureo et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2423833122.

Early Primates Primarily Inhabited Cold and Temperate Climates, New Study Suggests

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

Textbooks often portray primates as originating, evolving, and dispersing exclusively within warm tropical forests. This tends to come from fossil evidence...

An archaic hominin. Image credit: Ninara / CC BY 2.0.

Mystery Archaic Hominins Lived in Sulawesi 1.04 Million Years Ago

Aug 7, 2025 by News Staff

The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated...

Paestum honey: (A) underground shrine in Paestum, Italy; (B) one of the hydrias on display alongside a Perspex box containing the residue at the Ashmolean Museum in 2019; (C) graphic representation of the arrangement of the bronze jars inside the shrine; (D) sample from the core of the residue. Image credit: da Costa Carvalho et al., doi: 10.1021/jacs.5c04888.

Bronze Jars Found in Italy Contain 2,500-Year-Old Honey, Archaeologists Find

Jul 30, 2025 by News Staff

Archaeologists have re-examined a 2500-year-old residue found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum, Italy, previously identified as a wax/fat/resin...

Forensic facial reconstruction of another Australopithecus species - A. afarensis. Image credit: Cicero Moraes / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Australopithecus Males Were Much Larger than Females, Paleoanthropologist Says

Jul 30, 2025 by News Staff

Two extinct hominins, Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus, were significantly more dimorphic than chimpanzees and modern humans;...

Memories of navigating familiar paths are more fluid than previously thought, activating different neurons with each journey. Image credit: Zeinab Vessal.

Memories Drift across Neurons over Time, Animal Study Suggests

Jul 30, 2025 by News Staff

The brain’s internal GPS changes each time mice navigate a familiar, static environment, according to a new study by neurobiologists from Northwestern...

NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

New Study Provides First Precise Explanation for How Lightning Initiates in Nature

Jul 28, 2025 by News Staff

In a new paper, Penn State Professor Victor Pasko and his colleagues described how they determined strong electric fields in thunderclouds accelerate electrons...

A model of a Neanderthal man in modern clothing. Image credit: H. Neumann / Neanderthal Museum.

Serious Neurological Condition May Be Linked to Neanderthal Genes

Jul 22, 2025 by News Staff

Interbreeding between anatomically modern Homo sapiens and Neanderthals thousands of years ago may be responsible for Chiari Malformation Type 1, a serious...

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