In 2010, extraordinary circumstances allowed geneticists to reconstruct the first full genome of an ancient human: the DNA came from a hairball, frozen 4,000 years in Greenland soil. Since then, methods have improved so much in cost and efficiency that individual papers now report genomic data from hundreds of dead people (here, here, here). Ancient DNA (aDNA) has now been published from well over 2,000 human ancestors, stretching as far back as 430,000 years ago.
But around 70 percent of ...read more
(Inside Science) -- There are enough nuclear weapons in the world to cause atomic Armageddon many times over, according to scientists, who estimate that no country could fire more than 100 nuclear warheads without wreaking such devastation that their own citizens back home would be killed.
Most nuclear nations recognized by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons -- namely, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- have set about reducing their arsenals. C ...read more
Like humans throughout history, it turns out that dung beetles are celestial navigators. Steering is important to dung beetles. When a choice load drops, they want to grab their ball and roll away in as straight a line as they can manage. In this sense, they’re not so much navigating (which implies a destination), but they are orienting themselves by the skies.
Dung beetles who work during the day can use the sun. But nocturnal dung beetles rely on moonlight – and that waxes and wan ...read more
Meanwhile, the Earth as a whole continues to ride the up-escalator of human-caused global warming
Two U.S. agencies have reported on how Earth's climate fared in 2018. For the most part, the news wasn't all that surprising: The long-term trend of human-caused global warming showed no significant signs of relenting.
But I was surprised by one finding: The United States experienced something of a split climatic personality last year.
More about that in a minute. First, though, NASA a ...read more
When it comes to intelligence, fish get a bad rap. They’ve been plagued with the five-second memory stereotype, and thanks to Dory, are thought to “just keep swimming.” But a new study suggests that they might be smarter than we think.
Research published today in the journal PLOS Biology shows that fish can recognize and respond to themselves in the mirror. When met with their own reflections, a species of fish called the cleaner wrasse identified and attempted to remove marks ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine