Humanity’s ancestors nearly went extinct between 930,000 years and 813,000 years ago, when their numbers dwindled to about 1,280 breeding individuals, according to a new paper.The study blames climatic conditions during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, when encroaching glaciers and drought killed off many of the early humans’ food sources.Generations that lived through the stark 117,000-year period helped to rebuild hominid populations in Europe and Asia to a relatively stable level of about ...read more

Solar and wind power are excellent renewable sources, but they have one big problem: They’re not always available. The wind doesn’t always blow; the sun doesn’t always shine. To keep the power flowing whenever we need it requires batteries, but batteries are expensive and don’t last long. They’re also a waste problem and a hazardous one at that.Fortunately, researchers at MIT have come up with a solution. In a paper published this June, they detailed how they combined cement, water a ...read more

Anyone with a dog probably takes for granted the existence of animal dreams. Watch your pup’s legs pound the air as they yip drowsily, and it’s hard to think of an explanation other than an imaginary mail vehicle chase.To take a less commonplace example, an octopus named Costello was recently caught on camera during what appeared to be a nightmare. Apparently battling an invisible predator, the creature thrashed, shifted color and spewed a cloud of ink.Do Animals Dream?But how can we be sure ...read more

Movies are filled with bullies. In the 1980s, there was that raccoon-hat-wearing terror, Scut Farkus, in A Christmas Story, who made the narrator fear walking home from school. In the early 2000s, Regina George in Mean Girls personified the calculating bully who used verbal abuse and social isolation to harass other students. And Nelson on The Simpsons has bullied others for the last 34 years.Bullying is a common storyline because it’s common in real life. Twenty-two percent of kids ...read more

Around the world today, you’ll find at least 700 different kinds of carnivorous plants, ranging from pitcher plants that lure their victims into pools of digestive enzymes to adhesive-trap plants whose stalks secrete a natural glue, turning them into living flypaper. The fossil record contains evidence of early predator plants dating as far back as 40 million years, although many such plants likely existed much earlier than that. As fascinating as these plants are, none have captured the human ...read more

Fossilized cheek teeth have helped paleontologists learn a lot about what ancient elephants ate millions of years ago. Turns out, those with a less picky diet and more adaptability to changing environments survived. And those who stuck to a grass-based diet went extinct when there were extreme fluctuations in the climate.“This supports the hypothesis of such regions as 'species-factories' where evolutionary adaptation to changing environmental conditions first centered around," said Juha Saari ...read more

Borax was first mined in the Mojave Desert in the late 1880s, when wagon teams of 18 mules and two horses pulled huge loads of it out of Death Valley. A chemical compound, borax contains the element boron. Three-quarters of the world’s boron reserves are in Turkey, while the rest is mined from the town of Boron, California. Since it was discovered, borax has been used for many reasons and has recently been the subject of a popular TikTok challenge. However, the challenge claims that it will im ...read more

Nearly 6,000 years ago, our ancestors climbed arid rocky outcrops in what is now the Nigerian Sahara and carved spectacularly intricate, larger-than-life renditions of giraffes into the exposed sandstone. The remarkably detailed Dabous giraffe rock art petroglyphs are among many ancient petroglyphs featuring giraffes across Africa – a testament to early humans’ fascination with these unique creatures.We are still captivated by giraffes today, but many of these animals are at risk, largely ...read more

Though tobacco use is declining among adults in the U.S., cannabis use is increasing. Laws and policies regulating the use of tobacco and cannabis are also moving in different directions.Tobacco policies are becoming more restrictive, with bans on smoking in public places and limits on sales, such as statewide bans on flavored products. In contrast, more states are legalizing cannabis for medical or recreational use, and there are efforts to allow exceptions for cannabis in smoke-free laws.T ...read more

The health of people with diabetes, hypertension and obesity improved when they could get free fruits and vegetables with a prescription from their doctors and other health professionals.We found that these patients’ blood sugar levels, blood pressure and weight improved in our new study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.The improvements we saw in clinical outcomes could have a meaningful impact on overall health. For example, systolic blood pressure, or blood pre ...read more