Two-million-year-old teeth (four sets, in fact) tell new stories in a newly posted preprint paper that strips them of enamel and analyzes what the proteins have to say. This "proteomic" approach, which relied on the more rugged protein molecules instead of fragile DNA, revealed their relationship to the wider family tree of early humans.Taken from a sediment-filled cave in South Africa, the fossilized teeth once formed the dentition of an ancient hominin, Paranthropus robustus.This species was d ...read more

You know about Einstein, and you’re no doubt familiar with Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking, but there are plenty of famous physicists alive today that you should know about if you don’t already. Here are a few worth getting to know. 1. Alan GuthA cosmologist and particle physicist, Guth is most famous for developing the idea of cosmic inflation, or an inflationary universe. This work helped nail down the details and fill in some of the gaps in the Big Bang theory. Guth’s 1997 book,� ...read more

An individual’s personality can often shine in short texts and emails. The same also seems to be true of Large Language Model AI systems like Bard, ChatGPT and others. Hundreds of millions of people have discovered that in short conversations, these AI systems can come across as authoritative, sometimes as arrogant and occasionally as deranged. And that raises an interesting question: is it possible to reliably measure the characteristics of these AI personalities and then modify them in a way ...read more

“Ghost stars,” or planetary nebulae, are some of the most beautiful objects in the cosmos. Formed when a red giant star burns through its nuclear fuel and sheds its outer layers, the nebulae (which have nothing to do with planets) expand outward in striking patterns. Some of these exhibit strange properties, according to a new paper, which studied 136 nebulae using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.Many nebulae close to the galactic bulge – the central sec ...read more

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by a slow yet steady progression of memory loss. It often begins with simple omissions like forgetting a name before eventually robbing its host of the ability to perform basic tasks such as getting dressed. But how, exactly, does this progression unfold? Medical professionals often break down the disorder into the following stages: 1. Preclinical Stage This phase can last up to 20 years before the person even has any signs of disease — yet misbehaving pr ...read more

In two decades as a pediatrician, Jason Reynolds has had no success treating patients with opioid use disorder by sending them to rehab. But five years ago, when his Massachusetts practice, Wareham Pediatric Associates PC, became the first in the state to offer medication therapy to adolescent patients, he saw dramatic results.The first patient he treated with medication, a young man named Nate, had overdosed on opioids twice in the 24-hour period before seeing Reynolds. But that patient has had ...read more

Ever since neutron stars were discovered, researchers have been using their unusual properties to probe our universe. The superdense remnants of stellar explosions, neutron stars pack a mass greater than the Sun’s into a ball about as wide as San Francisco. A single cup of this star matter would weigh about as much as Mount Everest.These odd celestial bodies could alert us to distant disturbances in the fabric of spacetime, teach us about the formation of elements, and unlock the secrets of ho ...read more

The American pronghorn is a hoofed mammal native to North America. It's not an antelope, and it's not a sheep, although it has traditionally been called both. Rather, the pronghorn is an even-toed ungulate that can run faster than most any animal on Earth, with the exception of the African cheetah. Clocking in at 61 miles per hour, the pronghorn can run faster than any predator that lives in its habitat, and it has extreme endurance, keeping up that pace for long periods of time. So it begs to ...read more

The headlines about global warming have been hard to miss. First we had the unofficial hottest day on record, then a string of unofficial hottest days in a row, followed by the unofficial hottest week.But here at ImaGeo, I chose to wait for NOAA and NASA to come out with their regular independent monthly analyses of the global climate. I explain why below, but first, the news:Both agencies have found that last month obliterated the record for warmest June globally. In both NOAA's and NASA's reco ...read more

This article was originally published on Oct. 31, 2021 and has since been updated with new information on wet-bulb temperatures. For thousands of years, Earth has been good to us. The planet has cooperated with our physiology (or, rather, natural selection has shaped our physiology to fit a wide variety of climates) and allowed us to survive just about anywhere we please. But its generosity is winding down. As we careen toward temperatures that neither we nor any of our ancestors have encountere ...read more