Skull of Junzi imperialis, a newly described extinct gibbon from China. [Credit: Samuel Turvey/ZSL]
In what may be the tomb of the grandmother of the first emperor of China, scientists unexpectedly discovered the bones of an extinct and hitherto unknown species of gibbon, a new study reveals. These findings suggest there was a higher level of ape diversity after the last ice age than previously thought, and that the number of primate extinctions due to humans has likely been underestimated.
In ...read more
(Credit: SpeedKingz/Shutterstock)
The brain is an enormously complex thing. Trying to suss out the genetic overlap of the disorders that strike it is perhaps even more complicated. Still, the Brainstorm Consortium, a collaboration of researchers from Harvard, Stanford and MIT, is aiming to do just that. A new study put out by the group shows there are distinctions in how psychiatric and neurological disorders relate to each other; some personality traits may even be at play.
The study, led by ...read more
Wealthy nations send most of their recyclables to developing countries. (Shutterstock/Mohamed AbdulRaheem)
The world is truly awful at recycling. Less than 10 percent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled — the rest goes to landfills and litter.
And of that sliver of plastic that we do recycle, about half of it is shipped from wealthy nations to developing ones — especially China. Together with Hong Kong, China has imported nearly three-quarters o ...read more
Galaxy NGC 3344 (Credit: NASA/ESA)
Albert Einstein’s name is synonymous with intelligence, but he’s more than earned his rep. The man revolutionized physics when he was in his 20s and 30s. He came up with a whole new way of understanding reality, not as a fixed grid against which events occur, but as fundamentally intertwined with time and perception. Trying to prove Einstein wrong, somehow, is a perennial goal of budding and experienced physicists al ...read more
Three reconstructed ancient genomes of Treponema pallidum, the corkscrew-shaped bacterium that causes syphilis, reveal new details of its evolution. (Credit: NIAID)
The bacterium Treponema pallidum is a nasty critter. It can lead to a number of conditions, collectively called treponemal diseases, that you definitely don’t want to have. They include syphilis, a typically sexually transmitted disease that still infects millions annually. The origins of the disease have lon ...read more
Koko playing with a kitten. (Credit: kokoflix/Youtube)
Koko, a gorilla who was instrumental in expanding our knowledge of the inner lives and abilities of primates, has died at the age of 46.
The western lowland gorilla was born at the San Francisco Zoo in 1971 on the Fourth of July — her given name was Hanabi-ko, Japanese for “fireworks child� — and was trained in sign language from a young age. Koko proved ...read more
I read once that if you want to keep a giraffe in captivity you have to capture it when it is young because an adult giraffe will fight to the death to be free.
Giraffes congregating in Kenya are caught on camera as part of Wildwatch Kenya’s citizen science project. Photo by Twiga Walinzi
The story was in the book “Zarafa� by Michael Allin, and while I don’t think the statement is scientifically correct, I have alway ...read more
This Bogong moth is ready for its close-up. (Credit: Ajay Narendra)
What if you had to find your way through hundreds of miles of unknown territory with only your eyes and a simple compass to guide you? That’s what the Australian Bogong moth does in its annual migration, flying over 600 miles (roughly 30 million times its body length) to seek a haven from summer heat in the cool caves of the Australian Alps.
An international team of researchers announced in the journal Curre ...read more
