Researchers in the U.K. have achieved something of a world first: they have manufactured blood in the lab, which they’ve since administered to humans. The clinical trial will aim to test the safety and effectiveness of the lab-made blood in at least 10 healthy people. Two volunteers have already received a dose. The scientists — from the University of Cambridge, the National Health Service and the University of Bristol — are keen to find out whether their novel blood can last as long ...read more

Among the achievements of the ancient Roman Empire still acclaimed today, historians list things like aqueducts, roads, legal theory, exceptional architecture and the spread of Latin as the language of intellect (along with the Latin alphabet, memorialized nowadays in many popular typefaces). Rome was not known, though, for substantially advancing basic science. But in the realm of articulating and preserving current knowledge about nature, one Roman surpassed all others. He was the polymath Gai ...read more

While it's already known that Neanderthals were skilled hunter-gatherers, new evidence suggests that they decided to hunt and eat some of the biggest animals of their time period.  A new study published in Science Advances by a team of researchers from Germany suggests that Neanderthals hunted and ate straight-tusked elephants. Straight-tusked elephants were the largest land animals of the Pleistocene epoch and roamed Europe and Asia between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago.  Skeletal Analy ...read more

In the late 1950s, a Dutch archeologist visited Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in southern England. The massive stone circle wouldn’t be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for another three decades, and there weren’t swarms of tourists or a protective fence. The archeologist was the only one around that day. He parked his car on the side of the road and walked up to the massive stone circle. The area seemed remote, almost abandoned. Scientists now know that when Stonehenge was ...read more

It was a long-held belief in the scientific community that only younger scientists made significant advances. Having developed his theory of relativity at age 26, Einstein said, "A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so." Although there have been many noted scientists in their 40s and beyond, these are five who accomplished their important discoveries at a young age.  1. Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971) At 25 years old, Australian scientist L ...read more

The 1960s was a big decade for cannabis: Images of flower power, the summer of love and Woodstock wouldn’t be complete without a joint hanging from someone’s mouth. Yet in the early ’60s, scientists knew surprisingly little about the plant. When Raphael Mechoulam, then a young chemist in his 30s at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, went looking for interesting natural products to investigate, he saw an enticing gap in knowledge about the hippie weed: The chemical structure of its a ...read more

Earth is hit by thousands of meteorites each year, according to a 2020 study published in Geology — but they're small meteorites, not planet-changing asteroids. And with those meteorites come numerous elements that are the key building blocks for life on Earth. Until now, researchers believed that volatile elements like zinc and water might have come from asteroids that formed near Earth. However, a new study published in the journal Science indicates that these volatile elements may ...read more

This article was first published on Feb. 13, 2015. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it,” Albert Einstein reportedly said. I’d like to broaden the definition of addiction — and also retire the scientific idea that all addictions are pathological and harmful. Since the beginning of formal diagnostics more than fifty years ago, the compulsive pursuit of gambling, food, and sex (known as non-substance rewards) have not been regarded as addictions. Only abuse of ...read more

You’ve long heard that eating your biggest meal in the morning and your smallest meal at night is the best way to stay slim and trim. But what’s the truth? What does science say about optimal eating times for keeping the weight off and staving off cardiovascular disease, diabetes and a host of other chronic illnesses? Experts contend that while the quality of the food you eat is most important, the timing is a close second. Research shows that when people ate the same amount of calories each ...read more

It’s been long known that arthropods, meaning all animals with articulated limbs and bodies with segments, can rebuild legs and arms after a loss, according to Gerhard Scholtz, a comparative zoologist at Humboldt University Berlin. For instance, when crustaceans are attacked they can even break off their injured leg themselves, and sacrifice it to survive. And a growing body of research into the molecular mechanisms behind regeneration seems to suggest that there’s no one-size-fits-all come ...read more