Prehistoric engravings depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision.
The oldest blueprints ever found might have been used to prepare for large-scale hunts1.
Engraved lines on a stone in Jordan might depict landscape features near a large-scale hunting structure.
Drying trends are prevalent worldwide
Sources from Mesopotamia contextualize the emergence of kissing and its role in disease transmission
Artificial skin mimics the sensory feedback of biological skin
Record temperature combined with an anticipated El Niño could devastate marine life and increase the chances of extreme weather.
The global ocean hit a new record temperature of 21.1 ºC in early April, 0.1 ºC higher than the last record in March 2016. Although striking, the figure (see ‘How the ocean is warming’) is in line with the ocean warming anticipated from climate change. What is remarkable is its occurrence ahead of — rather than during — the El Niño climate event that is expected to bring warmer, wetter weather to the eastern Pacific region later this year.
Machine-learning systems in chemistry need accurate and accessible training data. Until they get it, they won’t achieve their potential.
Many people are expressing fears that artificial intelligence (AI) has gone too far — or risks doing so. Take Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent figure in AI, who recently resigned from his position at Google, citing the desire to speak out about the technology’s potential risks to society and human well-being.
Nuclear fusion won’t arrive in time to fix climate change, but it could be essential for our future energy needs
Last December physicists working on fusion claimed a breakthrough. A team at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California announced it had extracted more energy from a controlled nuclear fusion reaction than had been used to trigger it. It was a global first and a significant step for physics—but very far from enabling practical exploitation of fusion as an energy source.
Experiments that imitate solid materials with light waves reveal the quantum basis of exotic physical effects
Therapy for dissociative identity disorder has aimed to meld many personalities into one. But that’s not the only solution, a caring therapist shows
Moves by WHO and U.S. usher pandemic into new phase of disease monitoring, even as coronavirus kills thousands weekly
Two extremely cool examples of ‘failed stars’ called brown dwarfs are found orbiting each other.
A cardinal feature of the immune system is its ability to distinguish self from nonself. Although many early immunologists thought that its powerful defenses could rarely, if ever, be turned against the host, pioneering research on autoimmune diseases beginning in the early 1900s has documented a different reality. More than 80 different autoimmune disorders have now been described that may affect up to 5% of the population.
Collaboration stifled as many scientists look to establish fieldwork elsewhere
A physician-scientist has probed Parkinson’s disease for more than 30 years. Now, he has it
The current landscape of mobile mental-health apps is the result of a 70-year search to automate therapy. Now, advanced AIs pose fresh ethical questions.
Since 2015, Koko, a mobile mental-health app, has tried to provide crowdsourced support for people in need. Text the app to say that you’re feeling guilty about a work issue, and an empathetic response will come through in a few minutes — clumsy perhaps, but unmistakably human — to suggest some positive coping strategies.
Insights from mudskippers suggest that blinking is an adaptation to emerging from the sea.
Mammals are one of the most diverse classes of animals, ranging both in size, across many orders of magnitude, and in shape—nearly to the limit of one’s imagination. Understanding when, how, and under what selective pressures this variation has developed has been of interest since the dawn of science.
The 240 mammals sequenced through the Zoonomia project include the famous sled dog Balto, who was reported to have led a team of sled dogs in the final leg of the race to carry a life-saving serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925. His genome, in conjunction with others, was used to reveal his ancestry and adaptations, as well as predict aspects of his morphology, including his coat color.
The destructive behavior of great earthquakes in subduction zones, such as in Japan in 2011, depends on details of the earthquake slip. A slip at shallow depth is the dominant driver of tsunami. Using recently developed seafloor geodetic instrumentation, Brooks et al. found that the deeper slip of the July 2021 magnitude 8.2 Chignik, Alaska earthquake was followed 2.5 months later by a second stage of (aseismic) slip. This approximately 2 to 3 meters of “silent” slip allowed the shallow fault to catch up with its deeper portion, reducing its future earthquake potential.
Facility will produce up to five billion bacteria-infected mosquitoes per year
The non-profit World Mosquito Program (WMP) has announced that it will release modified mosquitoes in many of Brazil’s urban areas over the next 10 years, with the aim of protecting up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue. Researchers have tested the release of this type of mosquito — which carries a Wolbachia bacterium that stops the insect from transmitting viruses — in select cities in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Vietnam. But this will be the first time that the technology is dispersed nationwide.
An archipelago constructed of sand and mud is bringing new life to a dead lake but can this bold experiment have a lasting impact
