New research suggests that Neandertals in Paleolithic Europe made specialized tools from animal bones before the arrival of modern humans, and that modern humans may have acquired knowledge of this early technology from Neandertals.
An international team of astronomers led by BoMee Lee has established that mature-looking galaxies existed much earlier than previously known, about 11.5 billion years ago. “Finding them this far back in time is a significant discovery,” says lead author Lee. Reported in The Astrophysical Journal.
A Sandia National Laboratories team completed acceptance testing on an enormous mobile scanner that makes smuggling radiological materials more difficult, the eighth such unit that Sandia has deployed worldwide.
Observations with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a dwarf galaxy and a much larger galaxy called NGC 1232.
New research from an ice core taken from West Antarctica shows that the warming that ended the last ice age in Antarctica began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than previously thought.
When mice ate a diet of 25 percent extra sugar – the mouse equivalent of a healthy human diet plus three cans of soda daily – females died at twice the normal rate and males were a quarter less likely to hold territory and reproduce, according to a toxicity test developed at the University of Utah.
About 20 percent of cardiac arrest survivors report having a near death experience with visions and perceptions, but are the experiences real? A University of Michigan study suggests the dying brain is capable of well-organized electrical activity during the early stages of clinical death. The study in PNAS provides the first scientific framework for the near-death experience.
Georgia Tech researchers want to put your signature up in lights. Using thousands of nanometer-scale wires, the researchers have developed a sensor device that converts mechanical pressure – from a signature or a fingerprint – directly into light signals that can be captured and processed optically.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some 2 billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbor.
A Maya pyramid beautifully decorated with a rare polychrome- painted stucco frieze was unearthed in July 2013 at the site of Holmul, a Classic Maya city in northeastern Peten region of Guatemala.
Scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris is gobbled up to protect cells from damage, and in turn, modulates aging.
Full activation of a protein ensemble essential for communication between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord requires the rocking motion of some of the ensemble’s segments. The ensemble is known to be defective in neurological disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson's so this insight has important implications.
Forests have a limited capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study from Northern Arizona University.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have “painted” the Mona Lisa on a substrate surface approximately 30 microns in width – or one-third the width of a human hair. The team’s creation, the “Mini Lisa,” demonstrates a technique that could potentially be used to achieve nanomanufacturing of devices because the team was able to vary the surface concentration of molecules on such short-length scales.
Brookhaven Lab scientists discover that critical temperature remains constant across interface superconductors regardless of changes in electron doping levels, challenging leading theories.
The digestive tract is home to a vast colony of bacteria, as well as the myriad viruses that prey upon them. Because the bacteria species vary from person to person, so does this viral population, the virome. By closely analyzing the virome of one individual over two-and-a-half years, researchers have uncovered new insights on the virome can change and evolve – and why the virome of one person can vary so greatly from that of another.
Two University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues have advanced scientists’ knowledge of the Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts by answering a long-standing question about the belts by finding that electron acceleration takes place in the heart of the radiation belts.
In this Hubble composite image taken in April 2013, the sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars.
University of Texas anthropologists find ancient Miocene ape was physically incapable of walking on two legs.
The cosmic fireworks that characterize a starburst galaxy can abruptly fizzle out after only a relatively brief period of star formation, and astronomers want to know why.
If your local pond, lake, or watering hole is looking bright green this summer, chances are it has blue-green algae and it may be dangerous to you or your pets. A newly published study has used a novel approach to better understand why these algae form blooms and what makes them toxic.
Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out more than 90 percent of the planet's vertebrate species.
Today at the European Physical Society meeting in Stockholm, the international T2K collaboration announced definitive observation of muon neutrino to electron neutrino transformation. In 2011, the collaboration announced the first indication of this process, a new type of neutrino oscillation, then; now with 3.5 times more data this transformation is firmly established. The probability that random statistical fluctuations alone would produce the observed excess of electron neutrinos is less than one in a trillion. Equivalently the new results exclude such possibility at 7.5 sigma level of significance. This T2K observation is the first of its kind in that an explicit appearance of a unique flavor of neutrino at a detection point is unequivocally observed from a different flavor of neutrino at its production point.
Contrary to current scientific understanding, it appears that our microbial companions play an important role in their hosts' evolution. A new study provides the first direct evidence that these microbes can contribute to the origin of new species by reducing the viability of hybrids produced between males and females of different species.
The sight of a snowfall can thrill children, but the first-ever snow line seen around a distant star gives astronomers an even greater thrill because of what it reveals about the formation of planets and our Solar System's history.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have determined the orbital motion of two distinct populations of stars in ancient globular star cluster 47 Tucanae, offering proof they formed at different times and providing a rare look back into the Milky Way galaxy's early days.
Male bats appear to be the sexy singers of the animal world: they have learned to vocalize in a specific way to attract females, but once they have their attention, they change their tune – literally. They then produce a more creative array of sounds to entertain and keep the females interested.
A new study co-authored by Boston University astronomers indicates that a bow shock (a dynamic boundary between sun’s heliosphere and the interstellar medium) is highly likely. These findings challenge recent predictions that no such bow shock would be encountered.
Rapid tooth replacement by sauropods, the largest dinosaurs in the fossil record, likely contributed to their evolutionary success, according to a research paper by Stony Brook University paleontologist Michael D’Emic, PhD, and colleagues. Published in PLOS ONE, the study also hypothesizes that differences in tooth replacement rates among the giant herbivores likely meant their diets varied, an important factor that allowed multiple species to share the same ecosystems for several million years.
Archaeologists tunneling beneath the main temple of the ancient Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ in Guatemala have discovered a stone monument with hieroglyphic text detailing the exploits of a little-known sixth-century princess whose progeny prevailed in a bloody struggle between two of the civilization’s most powerful royal dynasties.
A five-year study gives new hope to some of the world’s most endangered primates by establishing a roadmap to protect all 27 species in Tanzania – mainland Africa's most primate-diverse country.
UA researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of an elasmosaur. A subgroup of the late Cretaceous plesiosaurs, the elasmosaurid plesiosaurs are recognized by their large body size and shape. This find is only the second elasmosaurid specimen containing more than one or two bones found in Alabama.
Two beachfront communities in New Jersey were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, but one fared much better than the other thanks to a long-forgotten seawall buried beneath the sand, according to Virginia Tech researchers.
New areas of extragalactic study may emerge from research by University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) astrophysicists using data from the Chandra Space Telescope to conclude that baryons making up all visible matter – once thought to be missing from clusters – are present in the expected ratios in large, luminous clusters.
Artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems and learned that it’s about as smart as the average 4-year-old.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune, the 14th known to be circling the giant planet. The moon, designated S/2004 N 1, is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system.
A new report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Disease Ecology Laboratory of Instituto de Ciencias Veterinarias del Litoral, Argentina (ICIVET LITORAL, UNL-CONICET) shows that increases in precipitation and changes in vegetative structure in Argentine forests – factors driven by climate change and deforestation in the region – are leading to increased parasitism of young nesting birds by fly larvae (botflies) of the species Philornis torquans.
Swarms of small earthquakes can precede a volcanic eruption, sometimes resulting in "harmonic tremor" resembling sound from some musical instruments. A new analysis shows tremor during a 2009 sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano glided to substantially higher frequencies, then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions.
Scientists have created a virtual model of the brain that daydreams like humans do. They hope the model will help them understand why certain portions of the brain work together when a person is mentally idle.
When we think of our prehistoric ancestors, we don’t usually imagine them lining graves with flowers – yet Weizmann scientists have now identified the oldest such grave. Using the Institute’s new accelerator mass spectrometer, the team will not only uncover new information about prehistoric life, but also overturn some long-held theories.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have deduced the actual visible-light color of a planet orbiting another star 63 light-years away. If seen directly the planet, known as HD 189733b, would look like a "deep blue dot," reminiscent of Earth's color as seen from space.
Based on the analysis of 3-D landmark data from skull surfaces of Homo floresiensis, scientists provide compelling support for the hypothesis that Homo floresiensis was a distinct Homo species.
Wind power development does not ruffle the feathers of greater prairie chicken populations, according to a seven-year study from a Kansas State University ecologist and his team. They found that grassland birds are more affected by rangeland management practices and by the availability of native prairie and vegetation cover at nest sites.
By studying rapidly evolving bacteria as they diversify and compete under varying environmental conditions, researchers have shown that temporal niches are important to maintaining biodiversity in natural systems.
University of Adelaide researchers have developed a new nanomaterial that could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations.
A normally staid University of Chicago scientist has stunned many of his colleagues with his radical solution to a 135-year-old mystery in cosmochemistry. At issue is how numerous small, glassy spherules had become embedded within specimens of the largest class of meteorites—the chondrites.
A female’s exposure to distress even before she conceives causes changes in the expression of a gene linked to the stress mechanism in the body — in the ovum and later in the brains of the offspring from when they are born, according to a new study on rats conducted by the University of Haifa.
A new study led by Florida State University researcher Stephanie Pau shows that tropical forests are producing more flowers in response to only slight increases in temperature.
The modern custom of laying flowers in graves or using them for funerals dates back to as early as 13,700 years ago, to our Natufian ancestors living in Mt. Carmel. “Even back then, the Natufians had burial rituals much similar to ours, nowadays”, said Prof. Dani Nadel, from the University of Haifa, who led the excavations.
Call it a bird’s eye view of migration. Scientists have created a new animal tracking system using a big data approach.
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