Other Sciences News

Klingons at San Diego Comic-Con 2014. Image credit: Chris Favero / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Klingon and Other Conlangs are Processed by Same Brain Mechanisms as Natural Languages: Study

Mar 18, 2025 by News Staff

What constitutes a language has been of interest to diverse disciplines — from philosophy and linguistics to psychology, anthropology, and sociology....

A Homo heidelbergensis, a Neanderthal and a Cro-Magnon. Image credit: SINC / José Antonio Peñas.

Modern Humans Descended from Two Ancestral Populations, New Study Suggests

Mar 18, 2025 by News Staff

For the last two decades, the prevailing view in human evolutionary genetics has been that Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa around 200,000 to 300,000...

Archaeological excavation work at the Sima del Elefante, Sierra de Atapuerca, Spain. Image credit: Maria D. Guillén / IPHES-CERCA.

1.1-Million-Year-Old Facial Bones of Archaic Homo Found in Spain

Mar 17, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Who the first inhabitants of Western Europe were, what their physical characteristics were, and when and where they lived are some of the pending questions...

The purple/blue solution in this vial contains crystals of berkelocene. Image credit: Alyssa Gaiser / Berkeley Lab.

Berkelocene: Chemists Create Berkelium-Containing Organometallic Molecule

Mar 12, 2025 by News Staff

Organometallic molecules consist of a metal ion surrounded by a carbon-based framework. They are relatively common for early actinide elements like uranium...

Lightning starts with a positive fast discharge, followed by an even faster and more extensive negative discharge observed in 3D; signal polarizations slant from the discharge propagation direction and rotate between the two opposite fast discharges; these features can only be due to a cosmic-ray shower that preconditioned the discharge path and guided the discharge current direction. Image credit: ELG21.

Cosmic-Ray Showers Play Pivotal Role in Triggering Lightning Flashes

Mar 11, 2025 by News Staff

How lightning is started in thunderstorms is poorly known. With a newly-developed 3D mapping and polarization system, physicists at Los Alamos National...

Shatter cones at the North Pole Dome in the center of the Pilbara region, Australia. Image credit: Curtin University.

3.47-Billion-Year-Old Impact Crater Discovered in Australia

Mar 6, 2025 by News Staff

A team of geologists from Curtin University has discovered unequivocal evidence for a hypervelocity meteorite impact 3.47 billion years ago (Archean Eon)...

Resistance or muscle strengthening exercise, using weights or the body itself, may be the best type of exercise for tackling insomnia in older age. Image credit: Engin Akyurt.

Exercise that Strengthens Muscles is Most Effective Way to Enhance Sleep Quality in Older Age

Mar 5, 2025 by News Staff

A new systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials shows that exercise, particularly strengthening exercise and aerobic...

The 1.5-million-year-old elephant humerus that has been knapped into a tool. Image credit: CSIC.

1.5-Million-Year-Old Bone Tool ‘Factory’ Discovered in Tanzania

Mar 5, 2025 by News Staff

Paleoanthropologists have documented a bone tool assemblage from a single horizon dated to 1.5 million years ago at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania. These bone...

Sohail et al. analyzed a high-resolution ocean and sea ice simulation of ocean currents, heat transport and other factors to diagnose the impact of changing temperature, saltiness and wind conditions. Image credit: Sohail et al., doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/adb31c.

Melting Ice Sheets are Slowing World’s Strongest Ocean Current, Study Shows

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

More than four times stronger than the Gulf Stream, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the world’s strongest ocean current and plays a disproportionate...

The Sun as seen by Solar Orbiter in extreme ultraviolet light from a distance of roughly 75 million km. The image is a mosaic of 25 individual images taken on March 7, 2022 by the high resolution telescope of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. Taken at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, this image reveals the Sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona, which has a temperature of around a million degrees Celsius. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / E. Kraaikamp, ROB.

Solar Heat May Play Role in Seismic Activity on Earth

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

Heat from our Sun drives atmospheric temperature changes on Earth, which in turn can affect things like rock properties and underground water movement,...

The site of Bété I in Côte d’Ivoire and other African sites dated to around 130,000-190,000 years ago. Image credit: Arous et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-08613-y.

Homo sapiens Were Living in African Wet Tropical Forests as Early as 150,000 Years Ago

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

New research led by Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology scientists challenges conventional ideas about the habitability of ancient tropical forests...

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

Giant Glaciers Reshaped Earth’s Surface and Paved Way for Complex Life

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

By chemically analyzing crystals in ancient rocks, scientists from Curtin University, the University of Portsmouth and St. Francis Xavier University discovered...

Samuthpongtorn et al. report that citrus intake and its components are prospectively associated with a lower risk of depression and altered abundance of 15 gut microbial species, including enriched Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. Image credit: Hans.

Citrus Fruit Consumption Helps Protect against Depression via Gut Microbiome: Study

Feb 26, 2025 by Natali Anderson

New research demonstrates a potential protective role of citrus fruit on the incidence of depression and suggests that Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, a...

Eating walnuts for breakfast could improve brain function for healthy young adults. Image credit: Tim Ulama.

Study: Walnut-Rich Breakfast Enhances Cognitive Performance throughout the Day

Feb 24, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Eating 50 grams of walnuts mixed into muesli and yoghurt led to faster reaction times throughout the day and better memory performance later in the day...

Denisovans were probably dark-skinned, unlike the pale Neanderthals. The picture shows a Neanderthal man. Image credit: Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.

New Study Suggests That There Was Late Bottleneck Event in Neanderthal Evolution

Feb 20, 2025 by News Staff

This bottleneck event happened between 130,000 and 50,000 years ago, according to new research led by scientists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona...

Biswas et al. observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around a buckminsterfullerene molecule, then emitted excess energy in the form of several electrons. Image credit: RMT Bergues.

Physicists Observe Synchronized Dance of Electrons on Buckminsterfullerene Molecule

Feb 19, 2025 by News Staff

Physicists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Hamburg have observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced...

Koll et al. report on the discovery of an anomaly in the beryllium-10 concentration profiles of several deep-ocean ferromanganese crusts (stars) from the Central and Northern Pacific during the Late Miocene. The major bottom (blue line) and surface (red line) ocean currents of the thermohaline circulation are indicated. Image credit: Koll et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-55662-4.

Researchers Discover Unusual Accumulation of Cosmogenic Beryllium in Pacific Ocean

Feb 11, 2025 by Natali Anderson

A team of scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Australian National University, has discovered...

The Earth’s inner core was previously considered to be solid. Image credit: USC Graphic / Edward Sotelo.

Surface of Earth’s Inner Core May Be Changing, Scientists Say

Feb 11, 2025 by News Staff

Geoscientists from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell...

The engraved cortical Levallois core from Manot Cave. Image credit: E. Ostrovsky / M. Smelansky / E. Paixão / L. Schunk.

Paleolithic Artifacts from Levantine Caves were Deliberately Engraved with Geometric Patterns: Study

Feb 5, 2025 by News Staff

In new research, archaeologists analyzed five engraved artifacts from the Levantine Middle Paleolithic: two engraved Levallois cores from Manot and Qafzeh...