Dental diary of a teenage hominid aged 1.5 million years.
Our early ancestors never went through the awkward age, suggests a new analysis of dental records. Extended youth may have emerged relatively late in human evolution.
Although apes cut the apron strings at around 12 years, despairing human parents are well aware that their kids take at least 18 years to grow up. The development of this prolonged growth period is seen as a key event in human evolution, allowing extra ti
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a receptor that plays a key role in restricting embryonic stem cells’ pluripotency, their ability to develop into virtually any of an adult animal’s cell types.
The work is the first demonstration of a mechanism by which pluripotency is lost in mammalian embryos, one that operates with nearly the precision of an on/off switch in mouse embryos.
With further study, the receptor, dubbed GCNF, could open the door to new ways of c
Keeping parks pretty means tailoring the trees to their source of water.
Irrigation water recycled from sewage can damage many plant species, new research has found 1 . The results show that landscape architects should tailor their choice of plants to the type of water they will receive.
Dale Devitt of the University of Nevada at Reno and colleagues began studying the effects of different water sources on plants after reports that ’reuse’ water had damaged tr
In 1998, Paul F. Hoffman and Daniel P. Schrag at Harvard University put forth a chilling description of earths climate some 650 million years ago. Their theory, dubbed snowball earth, held that between 750 million and 580 million years ago, ice repeatedly enveloped our planet, coating the seas from pole to pole and killing off early life almost completely. During the past few years, the idea has stirred up a great deal of debate. And new data published in the December issue of Geology only furt
Worlds smallest reptile is discovered in the Caribbean forest.
At just 16 mm from nose to tail, the Jaragua lizard is the worlds smallest. In fact, its the smallest vertebrate that can reproduce on dry land 1 .
The newly discovered lizard lives on Isla Beata, a small, forest-covered island in the Caribbean off the Dominican Republic. Blair Hedges, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University, together with Richard Thomas of the
A balanced portfolio of programs could mean a faster quantum computer.
Strategies from the world of finance could help get the best out of quantum computers, say US researchers 1 . The right portfolio of programs could solve a problem many times faster than a single strategem.
Quantum computers – purely hypothetical as yet – would be fast, but you could never be sure whether a program was going to work or not. You would have to keep running the program until
Samples reveal evidence of changes experienced by the surface of asteroid Ryugu, some probably due to micrometeoroid bombardment. Analyzing samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Space Agency’s…
…to control valley polarization in bulk materials. An international team of researchers reports in Nature a new method that achieves valley polarization in centrosymmetric bulk materials in a non-material-specific way…
Ultrafast laser spectroscopy allows the ascertainment of dynamics over extremely short time scales, making it a very useful tool in many scientific and industrial applications. A major disadvantage is the…
Chemical and heat treatment of sewage sludge can recover phosphorus in a process that could help address the problem of diminishing supplies of phosphorus ores. Valuable supplies of phosphorus could…
Some families call it a trial of faith. Others just call it a curse. The progressive neurological disease known as spinocerebellar ataxia 4 (SCA4) is a rare condition, but its…
… and generates six-week antibody response equivalent to standard regimen. Study highlights need for defined markers of mpox immunity to inform public health use. A dose-sparing intradermal mpox vaccination regimen…
Potential alternative to widely used contrast agent gadolinium. Some of the world’s greatest discoveries happened by accident. While the discovery of diamond dust’s potential as a future MRI contrast agent…
Scientists develop novel liquid metal alloy system to synthesize diamond under moderate conditions. Did you know that 99% of synthetic diamonds are currently produced using high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) methods?[2]…
Nebraska researcher Eric Markvicka gets NSF CAREER Award to pursue manufacture of novel materials for soft robotics and stretchable electronics. Engineers are increasingly eager to develop robots that mimic the…
Compact, low-power system opens doors for photon-efficient drone and satellite-based environmental monitoring and mapping. Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D…
…for enhanced microscopy analysis. Observing individual cells through microscopes can reveal a range of important cell biological phenomena that frequently play a role in human diseases, but the process of…
… a step towards the computing of the future. An international research team led by scientists from the CNRS1 has discovered that the magnetic nanobubbles2 known as skyrmions can be…