Other Sciences News

3D virtual reconstruction of the Bronze Age town of al-Natah. Image credit: Charloux et al., doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309963 / AFALULA-RCU-CNRS.

Bronze Age Town of Al-Natah Represents ‘Slow Urbanism,’ Archaeologists Say

Oct 30, 2024 by News Staff

Northwestern Arabia — the region between Mecca and Aqaba — during the Bronze Age was dotted with interconnected monumental walled oases centered...

Outcrop area of CAMP rocks in Pangea showing paleolatitudes at CAMP time (201 million years ago) of key localities with the terrestrial end-Triassic extinction including the Newark Basin (NB) in northeastern North America, the Fundy Basin (FB) of Atlantic Canada, and the Central High Atlas (CHA) Basin of Morocco. Image credit: Kent et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121.

New Research Casts More Light on Mechanisms of End-Triassic Mass Extinction

Oct 29, 2024 by News Staff

The end-Triassic extinction along with the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous events are the most severe mass extinctions in the past 270 million years. The...

Pistachios are the only nut that provides a measurable source of lutein, a powerful antioxidant that helps protect the eyes. Image credit: Erika Varga.

Daily Consumption of Pistachios Could Be Effective Dietary Strategy for Preserving Eye Health

Oct 25, 2024 by News Staff

Dietary interventions with pistachios — a bioavailable source of the xanthophyll lutein — are efficacious in increasing macular pigment optical...

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, originating in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, is a defining mode of interannual climate variability with profound impact on global climate and ecosystems. Image credit: Li et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2404758121.

El Nino-Southern Oscillation is At Least 250 Million Years Old, New Study Suggests

Oct 24, 2024 by News Staff

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which is characterized by irregular alternations between anomalously warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions,...

An artist’s impression of a Palaeoloxodon sp. Image credit: Chen Yu.

Scientists Find Evidence for Hominin Exploitation of Extinct Straight-Tusked Elephants in India

Oct 24, 2024 by News Staff

In 2000, archaeologists discovered the 300,000 to 400,000-year-old remains of three ancient elephants along with 87 stone tools at the Pampore in the Kashmir...

Ancient humans. Image credit: sjs.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Early Humans Were Infected by Two Distinct Types of Helicobacter Bacteria, New Study Reveals

Oct 21, 2024 by News Staff

Two ecospecies of Helicobacter pylori — named ‘Hardy’ and ‘Ubiquitous’ — co-existed in the stomachs of modern humans since before they...

Strawberries are a natural and delicious way to support heart health and manage cholesterol. Image credit: D. Сroisy.

Study: Regular Strawberry Consumption May Improve Heart Health and Manage Cholesterol

Oct 18, 2024 by News Staff

Daily strawberry consumption (between one and four cups per day) improves outcomes of lipid metabolism and inflammation in those at increased cardiovascular...

Excavations in Tam Pà Ling, northeastern Laos. Image credit: Hernandez et al., doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108982.

New Excavations Provide Insights into Early Human Activity in Jungles of Laos

Oct 11, 2024 by News Staff

Archaeologists excavating Tam Pà Ling (Cave of Monkeys) in northeastern Laos have recovered fossil evidence for some of the earliest Homo sapiens presence...

Orefice et al. studied the role of caffeine intake on endothelial function in lupus patients by assessing its effect on circulating endothelial progenitor cells. Image credit: Sci.News.

Consuming More Caffeine Improves Vascular Health, New Study Suggests

Oct 9, 2024 by News Staff

In a study led by the Sapienza University of Rome, caffeine intake was positively correlated with the percentage of circulating endothelial progenitor...

Cryo-EM structure of α-latrotoxin in two distinct tetrameric states. Image credit: Klink et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-52635-5.

Researchers Decode Structure of Vertebrate-Specific Toxin in Black Widow Spider Venom

Oct 8, 2024 by News Staff

The venom of black widow spiders contains a cocktail of seven specific latrotoxins, but only one — α-latrotoxin — targets vertebrates, including...

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.

Gamma-Ray Emission from Tropical Thunderstorms Takes More Forms Than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Along with visible light emissions, thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays that...

The center of this infographic shows the sharpest-ever image of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, while the insets show measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected along the JUICE’s flyby route. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.

JUICE Captures Sharpest Ever Image of Earth’s Radiation Belt

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft...

Han et al. found that erosion from a river network about 75 km from Mount Everest is carving away a substantial gorge; the loss of this landmass is causing the mountain to spring upwards by as much as 2 mm a year and has already increased its height by between 15 and 50 m over the past 89,000 years. Image credit: Truthseeker08.

Nearby River is Pushing Up Peak of Mount Everest, Study Suggests

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift...

A map of the East Pacific Rise region where the discovery of an ancient seafloor was made. Image credit: Jingchuan Wang.

Geoscientists Discover Mysterious Subduction Zone beneath Pacific Ocean

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

During the Mesozoic era, between 250 and 120 million years ago, an ancient seafloor sank deep into Earth in the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic plate boundary...

These 3,500-year-old kefir cheese samples are among the few dairy remains preserved more than 3,000 years and were produced by the Bronze Age Xiaohe population -- a population that possesses mixed lifestyles and techniques (e.g., farming, dairy production, hunting, etc.). Also, although early Xiaohe individuals show little genetic interaction with other populations, mitochondrial DNA data suggest maternal connections with East and West Eurasians. By recovering DNA information from ancient fermented dairy remains, Liu et al. investigated the lifestyle linked to the usage of fermented dairy by the Xiaohe population and explore the co-evolution between the fermented bacteria and their hosts. Image credit: Liu et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.008.

World’s Oldest Cheese Sheds Light on Origins of Kefir

Sep 25, 2024 by News Staff

Despite the long history of consumption of fermented dairy, little is known about how the fermented microbes were utilized and evolved over human history....

Kutter et al. discovered that individual nerve cells in the medial temporal lobe recognize zero as a numerical value and not as a separate category ‘nothing.’

New Research Sheds Light on How Human Brain Processes Number Zero

Sep 25, 2024 by News Staff

The number zero holds a special status among numbers, indispensable for developing a comprehensive number theory. Despite its importance in mathematics,...

The 5D memory crystal. Image credit: University of Southampton.

Researchers Store Entire Human Genome on ‘Everlasting’ 5D Memory Crystal

Sep 20, 2024 by News Staff

Unlike other data storage formats that degrade over time, 5D memory crystals can store up to 360 terabytes of information without loss for billions of...

Map of Cyprus showing the approximate position of fossil sites where dwarf elephants and hippos have been retrieved. Image credit: Corey J.A. Bradshaw / Flinders University.

Paleolithic Humans Caused Extinction of Dwarf Hippos and Elephants on Cyprus

Sep 19, 2024 by News Staff

Around 3,000-7,000 hunter-gatherers on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus hunted endemic dwarf hippopotamus (Phanourios minor) and dwarf elephants (Palaeoloxodon...

Lu et al. found that regular coffee or caffeine intake, especially at moderate levels, was associated with a lower risk of new-onset cardiometabolic multimorbidity. Image credit: Sci.News.

Moderate Coffee Consumption Reduces Risk of Multiple Cardiometabolic Diseases

Sep 19, 2024 by Natali Anderson

In a new study on the UK Biobank cohort, habitual coffee or caffeine consumption, especially at a moderate level, was associated with a lower risk of new-onset...