A tick preserved in amber, blood from what was likely a primate visible on its back. (Credit: George Poinar, Jr./Oregon State University)
Millions of years ago, two primates engaged contentedly in a grooming ritual that is still commonplace today. Searching diligently for pesky ticks and other insects, they cast them to the ground without so much as an afterthought. But one of those ticks would endure after landing in a patch of sticky sap, becoming entombed in amber w ...read more
(Credit: danm12/Shutterstock)
Imagine walking through a forest near dusk. It is peaceful and quiet; the setting sun paints streaks of light through tree trunks and across your path. The scene is familiar to anyone who’s ever taken a walk in the woods.
Using one word, how would you describe the experience?
You might defer to a string of adjectives: serenity, beauty, peace, fulfillment — words that dance around the feeling without ever precisely pinning it down. ...read more
NASA scientists modeled Earth’s CO2 as it shifts through the seasons using data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2. (Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)
Earth’s been around for 4.5 billion years. And during that time, our star has gotten stronger with age. Yet the planet’s climate has stayed relatively stable.
That apparent contradiction recently prompted an investigation by Gavin Foster of the University of Southampton and his colleagues. The scientists ...read more
A farmer climbs into a combine. (Credit: USDA/Lance Cheung)
Most people think of frost as a farmer’s worst nightmare. But for corn growers in Illinois, there’s little worse than a warm, soggy spring. Rainfall can soak soft prairie soils and rot the kernels before they can grow. If the rains keep farmers from their fields long enough, crop yields start to plummet. Rain can also wash away herbicides, pushing growers to apply more.
For years, this fear has driven farmers to plant earl ...read more
The skeleton of a near-term fetus found in a Black Death-era Italian grave. (Credit D. Cesana et al 2017)
For one unfortunate medieval Italian, the cradle was the grave. It’s commonly called coffin birth, though researchers use the terms post-mortem fetal extrusion or expulsion. And yes, it is what you think it is — but the latest case documented by scientists, from 14th century Liguria, reveals there was more to the story.
A re-examination of a medieval grave outside Geno ...read more
Can neuroscience help courts to decide how criminals should be punished? Is moral responsibility, or the lack of it, visible on a brain scan?
In The Brain Defense (Penguin, 2017, on sale now), author Kevin Davis explores the growing use of brain images as evidence in American courtrooms. What Davis calls the “brain defense” is the strategy of using evidence of apparent brain abnormalities as a mitigating factor when defendants are convicted of violent crimes. If someone’s brai ...read more
