Humans

Community science – also known as citizen science – has enormous appeal for researchers looking to collect larger datasets and engage the public in their work. But are the data collected in this way any good? Enabled by technology, community science allows researchers to harness the power of public interest, using their voluntary contributions to

Holding a conversation with a five-year-old can be an adventure. One second you’re sharing opinions on favorite breakfast cereals, the next they’ve jumped ship to something vague about a cartoon octopus. What seems like a limited vocabulary or difficulty in keeping focused could actually be an inability to reconcile inferences with another person’s perspective. Researchers

Like snowflakes, no two people are exactly the same. You’re probably used to the idea that people differ substantially in personality and in cognitive abilities – skills like problem-solving or remembering information. In contrast, there’s a widely held intuition that people vary far less in their ability to recognize, match or categorize objects. Many everyday

It’s the climax of the movie. The protagonist’s love interest is mortally wounded, their dog has run off, and for some reason it’s now raining. To drive home the fact it’s a gut-wrenching moment, the music is now playing in a somber minor key. New research suggests there could be some in the audience who

Imagine you have an interview for a new job tomorrow. Some people might think about what kind of questions they will be asked so that they can prepare, or imagine the interview going well. For others, the thought of an interview will cause them to toss and turn all night thinking of every worst case

In 2018, archaeologists made a staggering discovery in Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in central Tanzania: 52 previously undocumented rock shelters, deliberately painted with rock art. Weathering had mostly destroyed all but a handful; but of those that were preserved, one was an absolute enigma. The site, named Amak’hee 4, was elaborately painted with a frieze

NASA has requested the safe return of moondust and cockroach samples that were scheduled to be sold in a private auction that ended June 23. Earlier this month, the space agency contacted RR Auction, a Boston-based auction house, to stop the sale of moondust that was collected by astronauts during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.

A US navy destroyer sunk during World War II has been found nearly 7,000 meters (23,000 feet) below sea level off the Philippines, making it the world’s deepest shipwreck ever located, an American exploration team said. The USS Samuel B. Roberts went down during a battle off the central island of Samar on 25 October

Archaeologists have revealed a complex of hidden passageways and galleries deep inside the ancient Chavín de Huántar temple complex in the Peruvian Andes. The researchers think the network of chambers and galleries was used in religious rituals, possibly involving psychedelic drugs. It’s the first time in about 3,000 years that these particular hidden structures have

Multiple ancient hominin remains from caves in South Africa may be much, much older than previous estimates suggested. The Sterkfontein limestone cave system, not far from Johannesburg, has yielded so many ancient bones from the hominin genus Australopithecus over the last century that its location has been dubbed the Cradle of Humankind – deeply important

An overlooked archaeological site outside of Canterbury turned out to contain some of the oldest human-made tools in Britain. Many of the artifacts were found in the 1920s in the market town of Fordwich, Kent, but they were only recently properly dated. According to modern radiometric techniques, the collection of more than 330 hand axes

Have you ever met a perfect stranger and felt like you ‘clicked’ almost immediately? Well, that feeling of chemistry might actually be chemistry. An Israeli study recruited twenty pairs of same-sex, platonic friends who said they clicked when they met.  Using an electronic nose (and volunteers who heroically agreed to sniff T-shirts worn overnight), the

The idea of love languages is that we all express love differently – physical touching, buying gifts, giving compliments and so on – and recognizing that others may not express love in the same way that we ourselves do can help keep relationships strong. But there’s not been much research done to back that idea

Scientists have identified the traits that may make a person more likely to claim they hear the voices of the dead. According to research published in 2021, a predisposition to high levels of absorption in tasks, unusual auditory experiences in childhood, and a high susceptibility to auditory hallucinations all occur more strongly in self-described clairaudient

As people age, their immune systems naturally begin to decline. This aging of the immune system, called immunosenescence, may be an important part of such age-related health problems as cancer and cardiovascular disease, as well as older people’s less effective response to vaccines. But not all immune systems age at the same rate. In our

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

The Colombian army released images of one of the world’s most valuable shipwrecks, the location of which was unknown for nearly three centuries. Spain’s San Jose galleon was loaded with a vast cargo of treasure when it was sunk by British navy ships in 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The ship, a

When a collection of thirty-something skeletons was exhumed from graves in northern Kyrgyzstan in the late 1880s, little did archaeologists know that nearly 130 years later, the remains would reveal new evidence about the origins of the Black Death. The Black Death was the first wave of a 500-year-long pandemic that would go down in

Mastering fire cleared the way into whole new worlds for early humans – from accessing more nutrients through cooking (fueling an increase in brain size), to making the dark hours useful, and surviving migrations into harsher climates. How and when this mastery happened, however, has been lost to time, with fragments of burnt material hinting our

A British warship that sank in 1682 while carrying a future king has been located off eastern England, in a find described as the ”most significant historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982″. The announcement follows 15 years of secret verification work due to the need to protect the wreck. The

The ancient Romans were prolific artists of dicks. Charms, amulets, and necklaces decorated with a penis motif were commonly worn by people in the Roman civilization to improve fertility and ward away evil spirits and bad luck. Even children at this time were running around sporting little gold rings bearing male genitalia. The phallic symbols were

Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the world – from the ice sheets to the deserts, rainforests to savannahs. As individuals we are rather puny, but when we are socially connected, we are the most dominant species on the planet. New evidence from stone tools in southern Africa shows

Have you ever caught a baby’s eyes and suddenly felt judged? New research suggests that feeling may not be entirely imaginary. If you’ve done something a baby disapproves of, they might be using their gaze to single you out. A series of experiments, conducted among 8-month-old infants, has now found evidence that preverbal children are

We all have different preferences for when it’s the right time to bring out the winter blankets. And the thermostat’s setting often forms the basis of office arguments between women and men regarding the “correct” temperature for it to be set. Between the sexes, there are always more similarities than differences. But research does consistently

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies. Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by

For thousands of lucky people, the work week is now only four days long – and they’re still getting paid 100 percent of their regular income to do their jobs, even though they’ve gained an entire day of personal time. Does it sound too good to be true? It’s not necessarily an impossible dream. This

Simply being exposed to things we’re not familiar with – new objects or species of animals, for example – puts us in learning mode, new research has revealed, and makes us more ready to learn about the new thing later on. Once we’ve encountered a new thing, our brains are able to capitalize on a

Archaeologists have unearthed the ancient burial of a woman lying on a bronze bed near the city of Kozani in northern Greece. It dates to the first century BCE.  Depictions of mermaids decorate the posts of the bed. The bed also displays an image of a bird holding a snake in its mouth, a symbol

Decisiveness is about making calls quickly and efficiently – even if those choices aren’t always the correct ones. A new study looked at the relationship between confidence and decisiveness, finding that decisive people tend to be more confident about the decisions they’ve made. On the other end of the spectrum is indecision, a distinct inability to

If archaeology has shown us anything, it’s the sobering impermanence of our lives. Human settlements come and go. We may remain in specific regions, but the cladding on that region changes, the past often buried in ruins hidden beneath our feet. But one place seems to have been so special that humans used it, if

The human liver stays youthful even while the rest of our bodies grow old, according to new research, and on average the organ is is less than three years old, no matter what the age of the person it’s attached to. Using mathematical modeling and a technique called retrospective radiocarbon birth dating – which dates

A new optical illusion can trick most of us into perceiving an expanding black hole, new research reports. The image is completely static, but researchers say it gives people “a growing sense of darkness, as if entering a space voided of light”. The illusory forward motion is probably our mind’s way of preparing us for

The tightening grip of climate change on our planet is revealing secrets buried for millennia. As waters and ice recede under warming conditions, the traces of people and civilizations long gone from the mortal realm emerge. In recent months, Iraq has been hit particularly hard, battered by extreme drought, with the Mosul reservoir shrinking as

Collective action is often the key to creating dramatic social or environmental changes, be it reducing pollution and waste, diminishing overfishing by sourcing alternatives, or getting more scientists to openly share their data with others. Collective action, however, can involve social dilemmas. That’s because the choice to act altruistically might come at some personal cost.

Egypt on Monday unveiled a cache of sarcophagi and bronze statuettes – including one of pioneering architect Imhotep – at the Saqqara archaeological site south of Cairo. They were the latest in a series of discoveries made in the area. Saqqara is a vast necropolis of the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, a UNESCO World Heritage

We now know the genetic heritage one of the victims who tragically perished when the Italian city of Pompeii was devastated by a volcanic eruption nearly 2,000 years ago. Scientists have managed to sequence the genome of a man who was in his mid-life years when he died in the Pompeiian House of the Craftsman,

The ancient Maya once took enormous pride in their teeth. Long before Europeans were filling their cavities with gold, people in Mesoamerica were flashing grins bedazzled with jade, turquoise, gold, jet, or hematite gems. Male or female, rich or poor, it appears many individuals visited the dentist as young adults to have their teeth drilled

It’s been a big week and you feel exhausted, and suddenly you find yourself crying at a nice nappy commercial. Or maybe you are struck with a cold or the coronavirus and the fact your partner used up all the milk just makes you want to weep. You may indeed feel sad about being sick

For more than 500 years, the mummified remains of several small children frozen high on a volcano in Southern Peru kept a secret record of their final days. Since the mummies’ discovery in the 1990s, researchers worked to unlock ancient children’s pasts, unraveling a shocking tale that ends in human sacrifice. Now a new finding

Humans have a long and rich history with intestinal parasites, and it’s chronicled in our very poop. From Jerusalem to Rome to Greece, archaeologists have been digging through ancient dung to better understand the diets and diseases of long lost civilizations. The findings so far suggest epidemics of intestinal parasites were common among both the

Congress held an open congressional hearing on Tuesday on unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs – better known as unidentified flying objects – for the first time in five decades.  The hearing, held before a US House Intelligence subcommittee, included testimony from defense officials following a nine-page report released last year, which investigated more than 140 instances of strange sightings

Deep in the forests of Laos, in a cave in the Annamite Mountains, lay a single child’s tooth. That tooth – an unassuming molar – could be from a mysterious species of human we know little about, and of which few remains are known to exist. “Analyses of the internal structure of the molar in

In spite of its location midway down the eastern seaboard of the continent of South America, Uruguay’s brief history is a blur of European conflict, shaped by the colonial interests of Spanish, British, and Portuguese powers. What is starkly missing are voices from prehistory, of indigenous cultures that called the land’s rolling hills and temperate

Researchers have linked spending more time playing video games with a boost in intelligence in children, which goes some way to contradicting the narrative that gaming is bad for young minds. While the difference in cognitive abilities was a small one and isn’t enough to show a causal relationship, it is enough to be notable

Once thought to have originated and spread culturally from a single population in what’s now the Middle East, farming drastically changed our world and continues to do so to this day, for both better and worse. But ancient genomes suggest farming’s beginning was far more complicated than a simple spread and adoption of a new

Humans behave in strange ways. We readily reveal our inner feelings during moments of weakness, which doesn’t seem like the smart thing to do. Just by observing someone’s behavior, we can tell when they are in pain, frustrated or upset. Surely the best strategy is to try and conceal weakness? Why run the risk of

One of the best ways to catch someone in a lie is to try and distract them while they’re not telling you the whole truth, a new study reveals. It seems that the extra cognitive effort required to construct a lie and do something else at the same time means the falsehood doesn’t stand up

Stonehenge has been intensively studied for centuries. Yet even now, we are still discovering new aspects of the famous site. An archaeological ‘biopsy’ of the surrounding landscape has revealed a hidden network of large pits encircling the stone structure. The study is the first extensive electromagnetic induction survey of the region, and it has helped