Top Science News

February 15, 2023

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2.9-Million-Year-Old Butchery Site Reopens Case of Who Made First Stone Tools

Feb. 9, 2023 — Along the shores of Africa's Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research. The study presents what ...

Fossil Discovery Reveals Complex Ecosystems Existed on Earth Much Earlier Than Previously Thought

Feb. 9, 2023 — About 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed over 80 per cent of the planet's species. In the aftermath, scientists believe that life on earth was dominated by simple species for up to 10 million years before more complex ...

'We're Not All That Different': Study IDs Bacterial Weapons That Could Be Harnessed to Treat Human Disease

Feb. 8, 2023 — When it comes to fighting off invaders, bacteria operate in a remarkably similar way to human cells, possessing the same core machinery required to switch immune pathways on and off, according to new ...

Space Dust as Earth's Sun Shield

Feb. 8, 2023 — Dust launched from the moon's surface or from a space station positioned between Earth and the sun could reduce enough solar radiation to mitigate the impacts of climate ...

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Antibiotic Consumption Is Currently Not the Main Driver of Aminoglycoside Resistance Spread, Study Suggests

Feb. 14, 2023 — The spread of antibiotic resistance, where infectious bacteria are able to defeat the drugs intended to kill them, may not be primarily driven by antibiotic consumption, according to a new ...

New Compound Inhibits Influenza Virus Replication

Feb. 9, 2023 — Viruses use the molecular repertoire of the host cell to replicate. Researchers want to exploit this for the treatment of influenza. The team identified a compound that inhibits the body's own methyltransferase MTr1, thereby limiting the replication of influenza viruses. The compound proved effective in lung tissue preparations and mouse studies and showed synergistic effects with already ...

Review Strengthens Evidence That Repetitive Head Impacts Can Cause CTE

Feb. 10, 2023 — Over 600 CTE cases have been published in the literature from multiple international research groups. And of those over 600 cases, 97 percent have confirmed exposure to RHI, primarily through contact and collision sports. CTE has been diagnosed in amateur and professional athletes, including athletes from American, Canadian, and Australian football, rugby union, rugby league, soccer, ice hockey, ...

Ultra-Processed Foods May Be Linked to Increased Risk of Cancer

Jan. 31, 2023 — Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods may be linked to an increased risk of developing and dying from cancer, an observational study ...

How to Make Hydrogen Straight from Seawater -- No Desalination Required

Feb. 14, 2023 — Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater, in a critical step towards a truly viable green hydrogen industry. The new method splits the seawater directly into hydrogen and oxygen -- skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon ...

Four Classes of Planetary Systems

Feb. 14, 2023 — Astronomers have long been aware that planetary systems are not necessarily structured like our solar system. Researchers have now shown that there are in fact four types of planetary ...

Creating 3D Objects With Sound

Feb. 13, 2023 — Scientists assemble matter in 3D using sound waves for 3D ...

HETDEX Reveals Galaxy Gold Mine in First Large Survey

Feb. 9, 2023 — The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) announced their first publicly released catalog of astronomical objects. Over 200,000 astronomical objects including distant stars and galaxies have been mapped in 3D for the first time. Astronomers will use the data to better determine the Hubble constant, used to gauge the expansion of the universe. Possible 'naked black hole' early ...

Rats Trade Initial Rewards for Long-Term Learning Opportunities

Feb. 14, 2023 — Scientists have provided evidence for the cognitive control of learning in rats, showing they can estimate the long-term value of learning and adapt their decision-making strategy to take advantage of learning ...

Cockatoos Know to Bring Along Multiple Tools When They Fish for Cashews

Feb. 10, 2023 — Goffin's cockatoos have been added to the short list of non-human animals that use and transport toolsets. Researchers show that the cockatoos carry multiple tools to their worksite when the job calls for it. This behavior has only been previously reported in chimpanzees, our closest ...

Whiskers Help Nectar-Eating 'Acro Bats' Hover Like Hummingbirds

Feb. 8, 2023 — A new study found that nectar-feeding bats evolved extra-long whiskers unlike those of any other bat species that allow them to hover as they feed on flowers, much like hummingbirds. The researchers used high-speed cameras to capture how the forward-facing whiskers provide enhanced spatial information for fast, precise flight ...

Scientists Develop New Index Based on Functional Morphology to Understand How Ancestors of Modern Birds Used Their Wings

Feb. 8, 2023 — Scientists have compared the relationship among the strength of flight bones, body mass, and the way modern birds fly to better understand the evolution of flight in birds and extinct animals, such as the ...

This Groundbreaking Biomaterial Heals Tissues from the Inside out

Jan. 30, 2023 — A new biomaterial that can be injected intravenously, reduces inflammation in tissue and promotes cell and tissue repair. The biomaterial was tested and proven effective in treating tissue damage caused by heart attacks in both rodent and large animal models. Researchers also provided proof of ...

Traffic Pollution Impairs Brain Function

Jan. 24, 2023 — A new study has shown that common levels of traffic pollution can impair human brain function in only a matter of hours. The study was the first to show in a controlled experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that exposure to diesel exhaust disrupts the ability of different ...

Reducing Total Calories May Be More Effective for Weight Loss Than Intermittent Fasting

Jan. 18, 2023 — Timing from first meal to last meal was not associated with weight loss in a six-year study: Eating less overall and fewer large meals may be a more effective weight management strategy than restricting meals to a narrow time window, such as ...

Newly Discovered Anatomy Shields and Monitors Brain

Jan. 5, 2023 — Researchers describe a previously unknown component of brain anatomy that acts as both a protective barrier and platform from which immune cells surveil the brain for infection and ...

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Oral Bacteria May Increase Heart Disease Risk

Feb. 14, 2023 — Infection with a bacterium that causes gum disease and bad breath may increase the risk of heart ...

Can Hearing Loss Be Reversed? Research Reveals Clues That Could Regrow the Cells That Help Us Hear

Feb. 13, 2023 — The most common cause of hearing loss is progressive because hair cells -- the primary cells to detect sound waves -- cannot regenerate if damaged or lost. Researchers are now getting closer to identifying the mechanisms that may promote this type of regeneration in ...

Time of Day May Determine the Amount of Fat Burned by Exercise

Feb. 13, 2023 — Physical activity at the right time of the day seems able to increase fat metabolism, at least in mice. A new study shows that mice that did exercise in an early active phase, which corresponds to morning exercise in humans, increased their metabolism more than mice that did exercise at a time when they usually ...

RNA's 'Joints' Play Key Role in Our Gene Expression

Feb. 13, 2023 — Scientists have discovered a new wrinkle in our understanding of how our genes work. The team shed light on a longstanding puzzle involved in a common way our genes are modified that is known as RNA ...

Daily, Consistent Parental Reading in the First Year of Life Improves Infants' Language Scores

Feb. 14, 2023 — Daily reading improved language development in infants 12 months and younger, according to a recent ...

Smash or Pass? This Computer Can Tell

Feb. 13, 2023 — Could an app tell if a first date is just not that into you? Engineers say the technology might not be far off. They trained a computer to identify the type of conversation two people were having based on their physiological responses ...

A Sense of Purpose May Have Significant Impact on Teens' Emotional Well-Being

Feb. 13, 2023 — Feeling a sense of purpose has a significant impact on adolescents' emotional ...

Urban Gardens Are Good for Ecosystems and Humans

Feb. 13, 2023 — Traditionally, it has been assumed that cultivating food leads to a loss of biodiversity and negative impacts on an ecosystem. A new study defies this assumption, showing that community gardens and urban farms positively affect biodiversity, local ecosystems and the well-being of humans that work in ...

For Leaders, Playing Favorites Can Be a Smart Strategy

Feb. 13, 2023 — As anyone who’s worked in an office, a factory, or any other workplace can attest, sometimes bosses play favorites. Whether it’s assigning the most comfortable cubicles or the best parking spots, or deciding whose opinions take precedence during planning sessions, leaders inevitably wind up treating some employees better than ...

Recognizing the Potential for Bone Stress Injuries After Using Carbon Fiber Plate Footwear

Feb. 13, 2023 — Millions of endurance runners use footwear that has an embedded carbon fiber plate (CFP) in the midsole. While the performance benefits that carbon fiber plate footwear offers have been well documented, little has been published about running injuries related to use of this footwear. In a current opinion piece, authors describe five cases in which ...

The Relationship Between Ghosting and Closure

Feb. 13, 2023 — Odds are, you know someone who has been ghosted. And according to a new study, it can be a haunting experience. A recent study found nearly two-thirds of participants have ghosted -- ended a relationship by ignoring the other person, without offering a clear explanation -- and have been ...

A More Healthful, Gluten-Free Flour Made from Sweet Potatoes

Feb. 13, 2023 — Orange, starchy sweet potatoes are great mashed, cut into fries or just roasted whole. But you likely haven't considered grinding them into a flour and baking them into your next batch of cookies -- or at least, not yet! Recent research has reported the best method to turn sweet potatoes into gluten-free flours that are packed with antioxidants and perfect for thickening or ...

Will Machine Learning Help Us Find Extraterrestrial Life?

Jan. 30, 2023 — Researchers have applied a deep learning technique to a previously studied dataset of nearby stars and uncovered eight previously unidentified signals of ...

AI Technology Generates Original Proteins from Scratch

Jan. 26, 2023 — Scientists have created an AI system capable of generating artificial enzymes from scratch. In laboratory tests, some of these enzymes worked as well as those found in nature, even when their artificially generated amino acid sequences diverged significantly from any known natural ...

Billions of Celestial Objects Revealed in Gargantuan Survey of the Milky Way

Jan. 18, 2023 — Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects -- arguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken ...

Riddle Solved: Why Was Roman Concrete So Durable?

Jan. 6, 2023 — An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for ...

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When the Light Is Neither 'On' nor 'Off' in the Nanoworld

Feb. 14, 2023 — Scientists detect the quantum properties of collective optical-electronic oscillations on the nanoscale. The results could contribute to the development of novel computer ...

Atom-Thin Walls Could Smash Size, Memory Barriers in Next-Gen Devices

Feb. 13, 2023 — For all of the still-indistinguishable-from-magic wizardry packed into the three pounds of the adult human brain, it obeys the same rule as the other living tissue it controls: Oxygen is a must. So it was with a touch of irony that a scientists offered his explanation for a technological wonder -- movable, data-covered walls mere atoms wide -- that may eventually help computers behave more like a ...

Leonardo Da Vinci's Forgotten Experiments Explored Gravity as a Form of Acceleration

Feb. 13, 2023 — A new look at da Vinci's papers reveals his insightful attempts to probe the nature of gravity 500 years ...

Chiral Phonons Create Spin Current Without Needing Magnetic Materials

Feb. 13, 2023 — Researchers chiral phonons to convert wasted heat into spin information -- without needing magnetic materials. The finding could lead to new classes of less expensive, energy-efficient spintronic devices for use in applications ranging from computational memory to power ...

Hubble Captures the Start of a New Spoke Season at Saturn

Feb. 9, 2023 — Since their discovery by NASA's Voyager mission in the 1980s, temporary 'spoke' features across Saturn's rings have fascinated scientists, yet eluded explanation. They have been observed in the years preceding and following the planet's equinox, becoming more prominent as the date approaches. Saturn's upcoming autumnal equinox of the northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, means that spoke season has ...

Spanish Lagoon Used to Better Understand Wet-to-Dry Transition of Mars

Feb. 8, 2023 — In the ongoing search for signs of life on Mars, a new study proposes focusing on 'time-resolved analogs' -- dynamic and similar Earth environments where changes can be analyzed over many ...

A New Ring System Discovered in Our Solar System

Feb. 8, 2023 — Scientists have discovered a new ring system around a dwarf planet on the edge of the Solar System. The ring system orbits much further out than is typical for other ring systems, calling into question current theories of how ring systems are ...

Footprints of Galactic Immigration Uncovered in Andromeda Galaxy

Feb. 8, 2023 — Astronomers have uncovered striking new evidence for a mass migration of stars into the Andromeda Galaxy. Intricate patterns in the motions of stars reveal an immigration history very similar to that of the Milky ...

Scientific AI's 'Black Box' Is No Match for 200-Year-Old Method

Feb. 13, 2023 — A new study finds that a 200-year-old technique called Fourier analysis can reveal crucial information about how the form of artificial intelligence called deep neural networks (DNN) learn to perform tasks involving complex physics. Researchers discovered the technique can directly connect what a DNN has learned to the physics of the complex system the DNN is ...

AI Supports Doctors' Hard Decisions on Cardiac Arrest

Feb. 13, 2023 — When patients receive care after cardiac arrest, doctors can now -- by entering patient data in a web-based app -- find out how thousands of similar patients have fared. Researchers have developed three such systems of decision support for cardiac arrest that may, in the future, make a major difference to doctors' ...

Chromo-Encryption Method Encodes Secrets With Color

Feb. 13, 2023 — In a new approach to security that unites technology and art, E researchers have combined silver nanostructures with polarized light to yield a range of brilliant colors, which can be used to encode ...

Cinema Has Helped 'Entrench' Gender Inequality in AI

Feb. 13, 2023 — Study finds that just 8% of all depictions of AI professionals from a century of film are women -- and half of these are shown as subordinate to men. Cinema promotes AI as the product of lone male geniuses with god complexes, say researchers. Cultural perceptions influence career choices and recruitment, they argue, with the AI industry suffering from severe gender imbalance, risking development ...

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Environment News

February 15, 2023

Meteorites Reveal Likely Origin of Earth's Volatile Chemicals

Jan. 27, 2023 — By analyzing meteorites, researchers have uncovered the likely far-flung origin of Earth's volatile chemicals, some of which form the building blocks of ...

Global Warming Reaches Central Greenland

Jan. 18, 2023 — A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today's warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced. The most recent decade surveyed in a study, the years 2001 to 2011, was the warmest in the past 1,000 years, and the region is now 1.5 °C warmer ...

When Migrating Birds Go Astray, Disturbances in Magnetic Field May Be Partly to Blame

Jan. 13, 2023 — Disturbances to Earth's magnetic field can lead birds astray -- a phenomenon scientists call 'vagrancy' -- even in perfect weather, and especially during fall migration. While other factors such as weather likely play bigger roles in causing ...

Two out of Three Glaciers Could Be Lost by 2100

Jan. 5, 2023 — Scientists have made new projections of glacier mass loss through the century under different emissions ...

Latest Environment Headlines

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Kangaroo Fecal Microbes Could Reduce Methane from Cows

Feb. 14, 2023 — Baby kangaroo feces might help provide an unlikely solution to the environmental problem of cow-produced methane. A microbial culture developed from the kangaroo feces inhibited methane production in a cow stomach simulator. After researchers added the baby kangaroo culture and a known methane inhibitor to the simulated stomach, it produced acetic acid instead of methane. Unlike methane, which ...

Coral Reefs in the Eastern Pacific Could Survive Into the 2060s

Feb. 13, 2023 — Scientists found that some reefs in the tropical Pacific Ocean could maintain high coral cover into the second half of this century by shuffling the symbiotic algae they host. The findings offer a ray of hope in an often-dire picture of the future of coral reefs ...

Biodiversity Engine for Fishes: Shifting Water Depth

Feb. 13, 2023 — Fish, the most biodiverse vertebrates in the animal kingdom, present evolutionary biologists a conundrum: The greatest species richness is found in the world's tropical waters, yet the fish groups that generate new species most rapidly inhabit colder climates at higher latitudes. A new study helps to explain this paradox. The researchers discovered that the ability of fish in temperate and polar ...

Due to Their Feed, Chicken and Farmed Salmon Have Remarkably Similar Environmental Footprints

Feb. 13, 2023 — We love our chicken. We love our salmon. Thanks to how we farm these two popular proteins, their environmental footprints are surprisingly ...

Asphalt Volcano Communities

Feb. 13, 2023 — Santa Barbara Channel's natural oil seeps are a beach-goer's bane, flecking the shores with blobs of tar. But the leaking petroleum also creates fascinating geologic and biologic features. About 10 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, several jet-black mounds interrupt the featureless sea floor. These asphalt volcanoes, virtually unique in the world, provide a rare habitat in a region known for ...

Genetic Switch Makes the Eyes of Male Bees Large and of Female Bees Small

Feb. 13, 2023 — Bee researchers have identified a new gene in honeybees, which is responsible for the dimorphic eye differentiation between males and females of the species. The researchers have now presented this gene and the evolutionary genetic conclusions they have drawn from ...

Microbes That Co-Operate Contribute More Carbon Emissions

Feb. 13, 2023 — Communities of microbes that work together release more carbon dioxide than competitive communities, contributing more to climate ...

Deep-Sea Black Carbon Comes from Hydrothermal Vents

Feb. 10, 2023 — Hydrothermal vents have been identified as a previously undiscovered source of dissolved black carbon in the oceans, furthering the understanding of the role of oceans as a carbon ...

Researchers Solve a 150-Year-Old Mystery: Aetosaur Find Involves Juveniles

Feb. 13, 2023 — Aetosaurs had a small head and a crocodile-like body. The land dwellers were up to six meters long and widely distributed geographically. They died out about 204 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic. In Germany, an assemblage of 24 Aetosaurus ferratus individuals, only between 20 and 82 centimeters long, was discovered in 1877. Since then, scientists have been puzzling over whether they ...

Record Low Sea Ice Cover in the Antarctic

Feb. 10, 2023 — There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometers of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ...

Tracing the Origin of Life

Feb. 10, 2023 — A team of scientists has discovered a new abiotic pathway for the formation of peptide chains from amino acids -- a key chemical step in the origin of life. The current study provides strong evidence that this crucial step for the emergence of life can indeed occur even in the very inhospitable conditions of ...

Yellow Evolution: Unique Genes Led to New Species of Monkeyflower

Feb. 9, 2023 — Monkeyflowers glow in a rich assortment of colors, from yellow to pink to deep red-orange. But about 5 million years ago, some of them lost their yellow. Botanists now explain what happened genetically to jettison the yellow pigment, and the implications for the evolution of ...

Risk of Multiple Climate Tipping Points Escalates Above 1.5°C Global Warming

Sep. 8, 2022 — Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five ...

Risk of Volcano Catastrophe 'a Roll of the Dice'

Aug. 18, 2022 — While funding is pumped into preventing low-probability scenarios such as asteroid collision, the far more likely threat of a large volcanic eruption is close to ignored -- despite much that could be done to reduce the risks, say ...

How the Brain Responds to Surprising Events

June 1, 2022 — Researchers have found that one key role of the neuromodulator noradrenaline, produced by the locus coeruleus, is to help the brain learn from surprising ...

Lead Exposure in Last Century Shrank IQ Scores of Half of Americans, Study Finds

Mar. 7, 2022 — Researchers calculate that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from over 170 million Americans alive today, more than half of the population of the United ...

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How Does Biodiversity Change Globally? Detecting Accurate Trends May Be Currently Unfeasible

Feb. 10, 2023 — Existing data are too biased to provide a reliable picture of the global average of local species richness ...

Tracking Ocean Microplastics from Space

Feb. 8, 2023 — New information about an emerging technique that could track microplastics from space has been uncovered. It turns out that satellites are best at spotting soapy or oily residue, and microplastics appear to tag along with that ...

New Land Creation on Waterfronts Increasing, Study Finds

Feb. 9, 2023 — Humans are artificially expanding cities' coastlines by extending industrial ports and creating luxury residential waterfronts. Developers have added over 2,350 square kilometers of land (900 square miles, or about 40 Manhattans) to coastlines in major cities since 2000, according to a new study. The study reports the first global assessment of coastal land reclamation, which is the process of ...

Extreme Earners Are Not Necessarily Extremely Smart

Feb. 8, 2023 — People with higher incomes also score higher on IQ-tests -- up to a point. At high incomes the relationship plateaus and the top 1% score even slightly lower on the test than those whose incomes rank right below them. This suggests that one cannot infer high intelligence from high ...

Children Use the Same Brain Network as Adults for Tough Problems

Feb. 13, 2023 — Children as young as 4 years old show evidence of a network in the brain found in adults that tackles difficult cognitive problems, a new study ...

School Dental Program Prevents 80 Percent of Cavities With One-Time, Non-Invasive Treatment

Feb. 10, 2023 — In a study of nearly 3,000 schoolchildren, silver diamine fluoride -- a liquid that is brushed onto the surface of teeth to prevent cavities or keep them from worsening -- was as effective against cavities as dental sealants, the standard of care. A single dose of either topical treatment given in elementary schools prevented roughly 80% of ...

How to Really Reach Students With Online Teaching

Feb. 9, 2023 — The body reacts differently to online than to face-to-face teaching. Researchers show just what is required of digital formats in order to compete with face-to-face ...

Copy-Cat? Youth With Few Friends Conform to Stay in a Friend's 'Good Graces'

Feb. 7, 2023 — What gives one friend influence over another? Considerable attention has focused on who influences whom; much less is known about why one partner is prone to be influenced by the other. A study tested the hypothesis that within a friend dyad, having fewer friends than one's partner increases susceptibility to influence, because it reduces ...

How Supervisors Can Create a Better Work Environment for Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Employees

Jan. 13, 2023 — A new study sheds light on how the severity of an employee's hearing loss can impact their experience at work -- and the steps managers and employers can take to create a more inclusive environment for deaf or hard-of-hearing ...

Couples Don't Have the Same Experience When Both Work from Home

Jan. 3, 2023 — In dual-earner couples, working from home may be a better deal for husbands than wives in some ways, according to two related studies of workers in China and South ...

Cheerful Chatbots Don't Necessarily Improve Customer Service

Dec. 21, 2022 — Humans displaying positive emotions in customer service interactions have long been known to improve customer experience, but researchers wanted to see if this also applied to AI. They conducted experimental studies to determine if positive emotional displays improved customer service and found that emotive AI is only appreciated if the customer expects it, and it may not be the best avenue for ...

Volatile Pay for Gig Workers Linked to Health Problems

Dec. 8, 2022 — Gig workers, waiters, salespeople and others who rely on fluctuating income may be paying for wage volatility with their health, according to new ...

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