Vikings have a reputation as hardy, healthy folk. But scanning 15 of their skulls with modern imaging revealed they likely lived with a host of maladies.CT skull scans revealed that 15 individuals — whose ages ranged between 20 and 60 years — suffered from a broad range of diseases. The scans showed pathological bone growths in the cranium and jawbone. Such growths point to oral and maxillofacial disease, sinus and ear infections, and osteoarthritis, among others, the researchers reported in ...read more

What do horses, armadillos, sloths, and tapirs all have in common? They’re all animals, sure. They’re all mammals, too. But there’s something more striking, more special, about them: Around 500,000 years ago, they all fell into the same sinkhole along Florida’s Steinhatchee River. Sediments filled their sinkhole thereafter, trapping them there until they were found, fossilized, in 2022. Today, these animals provide insights into Florida’s Middle Irvingtonian Period, a forgotten age fro ...read more

Ears are incredible things. They help us process sound and play a significant role in our balance. They may have also just helped researchers gain a better understanding of Neanderthal evolution. Neanderthals emerged around 250,000 years ago from pre-Neanderthals populations (500,000 years to 250,000 years ago). These populations roamed Eurasia. For years, researchers believed that as pre-Neanderthals evolved into early Neanderthals and then into classic Neanderthals, there was little evolution ...read more

From time to time, our conscious mind is invaded by unpleasant memories, often triggered by small occurrences in our surroundings. Typically, we can push these memories aside quickly, reducing the likelihood of future intrusions. However, individuals suffering from depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often spend more time trapped in cycles of intrusive thinking, reinforcing negative rumination. Given that people with mental health issues frequently experience sleep dist ...read more

Even walls can evolve. A survey of the oldest section of the Great Wall of China not only bumps back its age by 300 years but shows waves of architectural innovations. The oldest section is in the Changqing District, Jinan, Shandong Province and is sometimes called the Great Wall of Qi.Revisiting the Great WallThe survey, conducted last year by the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, employed a host of tools to investigate the wall’s origins. They sampled soil fro ...read more

Freelance software engineering is a lucrative and dynamic field where skilled developers tackle diverse challenges, from bug fixes to full-stack feature development. In recent years, these workers have been among the first to incorporate AI systems into their workflow to help write code. That raises an interesting question: could an AI system do the same job by itself? In other words, have software engineers effectively developed themselves out of their own jobs?Now we get an answer of sorts tha ...read more

Explorers have long trusted compasses to navigate Earth’s land and oceans, using our planet’s global magnetic field as their guide. But what happens when you take a compass beyond Earth — into orbit, to the Moon, to other planets, or even beyond our solar system? Would it still point north, or would it aimlessly spin in the absence of a dominant magnetic field? The answer depends on where you are in the cosmos and what other magnetic fields are at play.On Earth, a compass needle aligns wit ...read more

An experimental Microsoft computer chip under development will deliver a one-two tech punch, according to the company.The first blow is a statement that Microsoft scientists have developed the first-ever quantum-computing chip in its class. This form of computing could theoretically make, ahem, quantum leaps in both speed and number of calculations a computer could perform simultaneously.The physics that theoretically would power such a chip is hard to understand — even for some physicists.“ ...read more

Feelings of exclusion aren’t all that fun. And they aren’t all that unusual, either, at least not for narcissists. According to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, narcissists are more likely to feel left out than non-narcissists, partially due to their actual exclusion and partially due to their perceived exclusion.“Feeling ostracized is a subjective experience based on the perception of social cues by the individual,” said Christiane Büttner, a study autho ...read more

In a hopeful step for medicine, a 2-and-a-half-year-old child born with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) has shown no symptoms of the genetic condition, all thanks to a gene-targeting drug that the mother took during late pregnancy.A new study details this breakthrough case of prenatal therapy that holds promise for future treatment of the neurodegenerative disorder, which leads to the wasting of muscles over time and is usually diagnosed in infancy or early childhood. Prenatal Treatment for Spina ...read more