Humans

Fear is a common response to darkness, especially in children, and now scientists think they might have figured out the brain mechanisms behind it,  mechanisms that work in a couple of areas of the brain in particular. The amygdala section of the brain is responsible for processing emotion and regulating our fear response, and a

When the Black Death ravaged Europe midway through the 14th century, it wiped out around half of the population with deaths so swift, people had to bury countless victims in mass graves. At least that’s the story archaeological remains have told us until now. Researchers have just unearthed new evidence suggesting mass burials are only

Getting rid of hiccups is no easy feat. Once your diaphragm starts involuntarily spasming, there’s little you can do to stop the ensuing “hupps” and “hics” other than wait it out. If you want to speed up the process, you can always try holding your breath, drinking upside down, sucking on a lemon, or eating

Despite us having mapped and categorized so much of mammal biology already, there are still new surprises lying in wait. Now, scientists have found two new types of glia – a type of support cell – in mouse brains. Glial cells are usually thought of as the support act in the brain and the spinal cord, adding

The novel coronavirus may have already arrived in the US by late December 2019, adding to the evidence that the virus was already lurking here at least a month before the country’s first reported case, according to a new study. The study researchers analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples collected in the US from January 2 to

The main signs of COVID-19 are fever, a cough, fatigue and a loss of your sense of taste and smell. Signs of COVID-19 in the skin have been noted too. But there’s another part of the body where the virus appears to have an impact: the fingernails. Following a COVID-19 infection, for a small number

We’re all familiar with songs getting stuck in our head while we’re awake, but it turns out this can happen during sleep as well. A new study investigating the phenomenon indicates that earworms invading our brains at night could cause problems in getting to sleep and staying asleep. “Our brains continue to process music even

At the mercy of natural selection since the dawn of life, our ancestors adapted, mated and died, passing on tiny genetic mutations that eventually made humans what we are today.  But evolution isn’t bound strictly to genes anymore, a new study suggests. Instead, human culture may be driving evolution faster than genetic mutations can work. In this

New insights into the peopling of Siberia and human migration into the Americas have been found in what might seem like an unlikely place: gut bugs. Helicobacter pylori is a type of bacterium that lives in people’s digestive tracts and can cause stomach ulcers. It has evolved alongside (and inside) humans for at least the

Height varies dramatically between individuals. The tallest person ever measured was 2.72 meters (6.9 feet) tall, whilst the shortest person stood at just 67 centimeters (26 inches). We often consider our height as being unchangeable, determined by our genetic make-up from when we were conceived. After all, tall parents usually have tall children and vice

As human languages are driven to extinction around the world, a verbal encyclopedia of medical knowledge is on the brink of being forgotten. Among 12,495 medicinal uses for plants in indigenous communities, new research has found over 75 percent of those plants are each tied to just one local language. If these unique words trickle out

Camouflage techniques can usually be relied upon to conceal humans and animals alike, but expertly trained individuals can see through these visual tricks – and scientists have now learned more about how this works. Not only are trained camouflage breakers able to detect that something is hidden in a scene, they’re able to correctly assess

Your friends are on average more popular than you are, according to a phenomenon known as the “friendship paradox.” Now, a group of mathematicians has come up with a new theory that takes the friendship paradox beyond averages, and they found that their equations describe real-world popularity differences among friends. Sociologist Scott Feld first explained

A thousand years ago, two Vikings died violently. One, on the Danish island of Funen, died in his 50s, likely from a stab wound to his hip. The other died in his 20s a world away in Oxford, England, his body riddled with wounds and thrown in a mass grave. It would not be the

At the age of 16, when Tony Kofi was an apprentice builder living in Nottingham, he fell from the third story of a building. Time seemed to slow down massively, and he saw a complex series of images flash before his eyes. As he described it, “In my mind’s eye I saw many, many things:

COVID-19 put a spotlight on personal health and safety like perhaps only a pandemic can, but there was one place at least where people didn’t get the memo: American roads. Despite Americans driving hundreds of billions of miles less in 2020 than they did in 2019, deadly traffic accidents actually surged in the year of

Our incredible powers of learning are such a defining part of being human, yet we still don’t fully understand how our brains absorb new skills. Powerful modern imaging techniques, allowing us to look more closely at how memory consolidation works, have just highlighted the importance of wakeful rest in the learning process. Researchers have been

Emotional intelligence, the ability to regulate and perceive emotions, is the subject of much debate amongst scientists and the public alike. Whilst most people agree that being able to read other people and control your own feelings are positive characteristics that vary in strength between individuals, objectively defining and measuring these abilities is not easy.

Seventeen decapitated skeletons dating back about 1,700 years have been discovered in three Roman cemeteries at Knobb’s Farm in Cambridgeshire, in the UK.  Archaeologists who excavated the site think that the people were executed for violating Roman laws. However, scholars not affiliated with the research expressed mixed views about this explanation.  The cemeteries hold the

When we think of Antarctic exploration, the narrative is overwhelmingly white. The first confirmed sighting of mainland Antarctica was attributed to a Russian expedition in 1820, while the first landing on the mainland is attributed to an American explorer in 1821. Now, a new paper by New Zealander researchers suggests that the indigenous people of

Ancient, oscillating weather patterns similar to El Niño are chiefly responsible for environmental shifts in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 620,000 years, new research reveals – and they’re also likely to have played a big role in our evolution as a species. The emergence of Homo sapiens from Africa is well established, and the new

With enough training, most humans can learn how to echolocate, using their tongue to make clicking sounds, and interpreting the sounds of the echoes that come back, reflected from the surrounding environment.  In as few as 10 weeks, researchers were able to teach participants how to navigate obstacles and recognize the size and orientation of

Coxcatlan Cave in Mexico’s Tehuacan Valley is a time capsule like no other. Its dusty floor is a history book, its pages detailing thousands of years of food and technology of the land’s inhabitants. Archaeologists from the US and Mexico have finally dug into its earliest chapter, using advanced dating techniques to determine the age

Most people aren’t trying to share fake news, but that’s part of the problem: Nobody thinks it’s their fault. In a recent survey of 8,285 Americans, 90 percent of respondents thought they were better than the average person at spotting false news on social media. Obviously, a lot of people were mistaken. When asked to

That delightful saying about men thinking with their nether regions has gained a new meaning. A new study has found an unnerving lot of similarities between men’s brains and the innards of their scrotums. “Brain and testis have the highest number of common proteins, compared with other human body tissues,” a team led by biomedical

A 2,300-year-old ceramic jar filled with the bones of a dismembered chicken was likely part of an ancient curse to paralyze and kill 55 people in ancient Athens, archaeologists say. The finding reveals new evidence for how people tried to use “magic” in the city. They discovered the jar, along with a coin, beneath the floor

One of the oldest known war cemeteries, discovered in the Nile River Valley, did not necessarily originate from a single epic battle like we once thought.  According to a full reanalysis of this ancient burial site, known as Jebel Sahaba, the humans buried here were probably subject to a series of violent skirmishes rather than

A set of cut and sharpened turkey bones excavated decades ago from an ancient Native American grave seem to be the oldest tattooing tools we’ve found to date. A new, detailed analysis of these artifacts has allowed archaeologists to determine that they were likely used to tattoo skin, bringing us a little closer to understanding

There’s already a strong link between sleep and memory, and scientists have just found out more about how that relationship works: there are specific patterns of brain activity that open up windows on our past experiences, fixing them in our long-term memory. These patterns involve the slow oscillations (SOs) of brain waves that normally accompany

A “lost” letter written by Albert Einstein to a rival physicist recently sold to an anonymous collector for US$1.2 million at auction. The handwritten letter includes Einstein’s famous E=mc2 equation and is one of just four known examples of the equation in the physicist’s own handwriting, according to archivists from the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech and

Hidden in the vast, arid expanses of India’s Thar Desert lie mysterious old drawings carved into the land. These newly discovered designs are of such immense scale, they were likely never able to be glimpsed in their entirety by those who made them, researchers say. The huge motifs are examples of geoglyphs – giant hand-made

A spherical unidentified flying object (UFO) hovers in midair, moves side to side like a ball in the “Pong” video game and then seems to dive into the ocean, in footage that was recently released online by a filmmaker who produces documentaries about UFOs.  Though a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the US Navy did capture the footage,

If you have an overreaction to ‘triggering’ sounds such as other people chewing or drumming their fingers, you probably have misophonia. Now, scientists have discovered a key brain connection responsible for setting it off. The connection runs from the auditory cortex (the brain’s hearing center) to the orofacial motor cortex (controlling movement of the face, mouth

The science replication crisis might be worse than we thought: new research reveals that studies with replicated results tend to be cited less often than studies which have failed to replicate. That’s not to say that these more widely cited studies with unreplicated experiments are necessarily wrong or misleading – but it does mean that,

There once was a time when humans held everything we knew in our heads. That might sound impossible these days when the internet is at our fingertips, but for millennia, it was our only way of passing on knowledge. Now, some researchers want to remind us that there is still place for ancient memory techniques

New research with an artificial robotic digit has yielded surprising results – in just a few days, people using the thumb were able to operate it naturally to perform complex tasks like building towers from wooden blocks, or stirring your coffee while holding it. Not only that, but neural scans showed that the presence of

These levitating spheres may appear red, purple or green at first glance, but in actuality, all 12 orbs are the same bland shade of beige.  Shrinking the image exaggerates this illusion, while zooming in minimizes the effect, according to David Novick, the creator of the image and a professor of engineering education and leadership at

In caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, ancient peoples marked the walls with red and mulberry hand stencils, and painted images of large native mammals or imaginary human-animal creatures. These are the oldest cave art sites yet known – or at least the oldest attributed to our species. One painting of a Sulawesi warty

After a winter of lockdown and with coronavirus restrictions beginning to lift, many will be hoping for good weather this summer. Restrictions on foreign travel have meant that more people plan to stay within their country for their summer holidays than ever before. This shift, along with our social lives increasingly being based outside, makes

There you are, sitting front row of Miss Ryan’s English class in your underwear, when in walks Chris Hemsworth holding a saxophone in one hand and a turtle in the other, asking you to play in his band. “Why not?” you say, taking the turtle before snapping awake in a cold sweat, the darkness pressing

An ancient necropolis with 40 tombs, including cylindrical jars filled with human remains, has been discovered on the French island of Corsica.  The people buried in the cemetery range from infants to adults, the archaeologists said. Located in the town of Île-Rousse on the island’s northern coast, the cemetery seems to have been used between

If you’re going to gargle something next time you go for a run, here’s some free advice: Try using a pink-colored drink. As strange as it sounds, pink drinks appear to be linked with enhanced running performance. In a new study, scientists found that runners who rinsed their mouths with a pink-colored liquid solution –

Once upon a time, the Aqueduct of Valens was one of the longest aqueduct lines in the ancient world. By the fifth century, Constantinople’s citizens were getting their water through this channel – named after emperor Valens – that could have exceeded 500 kilometers (310 miles) in its prime. Today, scientists have finally identified a

Everybody knows the physical feeling of acceleration: the surging sensation as we pick up speed while moving from one place to another. But few of us know what it might be doing to our bodies. In a new study, scientists investigated the physiological effects of acceleration in a small experiment, where participants simply drove themselves

A cave ancient Romans believed to be a gate to the underworld was so deadly that it killed all animals who entered its proximity, while not harming the human priests who led them. Millennia later, scientists believe they have figured out why – a concentrated cloud of carbon dioxide that suffocated those who breathed it.

Archaeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of nine Neanderthals who were hunted and mauled to death by a pack of hyenas in a cave just outside Rome, the Italian Culture Ministry announced Saturday. The fossilized bones, which included skullcaps and broken jawbones, were discovered in the Guattari Cave in San Felice Circeo in Italy’s Lazio region. They are

IQ tests are widely used by educational and professional organizations to assess applicants. They are also the focus of psychological studies which seek to identify the many factors that influence intelligence. Like all tests, it seems reasonable to assume that you could improve your IQ score by practicing the test many times. Is it possible to improve

Fields of rust-colored soil, spindly cassava, small farms, and villages dot the landscape. Dust and smoke blur the mountains visible beyond massive Lake Malawi. Here in tropical Africa, you can’t escape the signs of human presence. How far back in time would you need to go in this place to discover an entirely natural environment?