Nuclear DNA From Cave Sediments Helps Unlock Ancient Human History
For the first time, scientists have succeeded in extracting and analyzing Neandertal chromosomal DNA preserved in cave sediments. The field of ancient DNA has revealed…
Max Planck Institute
Mammals Evolved Big Brains After Big Disasters (Mass Extinction and Climate Change)
Largest study of its kind reveals the way relative brain size of mammals changed over the last 150 million years. Scientists from Stony Brook University…
Long Live Superconductivity! Short Flashes of Laser Light With Sustaining Impact
Superconductivity – the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss – is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is…
Corona Inhibitors: X-ray Screening Identifies Promising Drugs for Treatment of COVID-19
Extensive X-ray screening reveals binding to key virus protein. A team of researchers, including scientists from the MPSD, has identified several candidates for drugs against…
Oldest Modern Human Genome Reconstructed Using DNA From 45,000-Year-Old Skull
The fossil skull of a woman in Czechia has provided the oldest modern human genome yet reconstructed, representing a population that formed before the ancestors…
Chest-Beating Gorillas Don’t Bluff: Honest Signal of True Body Size
The chest beats given by adult male gorillas reliably indicate their body size. Gorillas usually stand bipedally and rapidly beat their chests with cupped hands…
Asdex Upgrade: Paving the Way for a Fusion Power Plant
On March 21, 1991, the Asdex Upgrade experimental facility at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching generated the first plasma. For 30…
“Hoinga” Surprise – Debris of Stellar Explosion Found at Unusual Location
eROSITA space telescope finds largest supernova remnant ever discovered with X-rays. In the first all-sky survey by the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard SRG, astronomers at…
Ancient Genetics Trace the Origin and Decline of the Legendary Scythians
Because of their interactions and conflicts with the major contemporaneous civilizations of Eurasia, the Scythians enjoy a legendary status in historiography and popular culture. The…
Unusual Material Features Spontaneous Superconducting Currents – Why It Superconducts at All Is Completely Unknown
Superconductivity is a complete loss of electrical resistance. Superconductors are not merely very good metals: it is a fundamentally different electronic state. In normal metals,…
Chimpanzees Without Borders: Researchers Uncover Recent Genetic Connectivity Between Chimpanzee Subspecies
A new large-scale study uncovers recent genetic connectivity between chimpanzee subspecies despite past isolation events. Researchers from the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf)…
New Low-Cost, Fast COVID-19 Coronavirus Test Developed – Doesn’t Need Unpleasant Nasal Swab
Researchers develop a low-cost and fast method to detect a COVID-19 infection from a pool of gargle lavage samples. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)…
Astronomers See Whirlwind of Dust and Pebbles Around Possible Exoplanet-in-the-Making
An international team of astronomers led by researchers from the Leiden University has discovered a whirlwind of dust and pebbles in orbit around a young…
“Unprecedented” New Form of Symbiosis Discovered
Energy-providing bacterial endosymbiont enables its unicellular eukaryotic host to breathe nitrate, demonstrating that unicellular eukaryotes may acquire endosymbionts to complement or replace functions of their…
See World’s First Video of a Space-Time Crystal
Periodic pattern consisting of magnons is formed at room temperature. A team of researchers has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons…
Archaeologists Discover Neanderthals and Homo sapiens Used Identical Nubian Technology
Long held in a private collection, the newly analyzed tooth of an approximately 9-year-old Neanderthal child marks the hominin’s southernmost known range. Analysis of the…
Climate Change – Not Overhunting by Humans – Likely Drove the Extinction of North America’s Largest Animals
New research suggests that overhunting by humans was not responsible for the extinction of mammoths, ground sloths, and other North American megafauna. A new study…
On the Origin of Our Species: Untangling Ancestry in the Evolution of Homo sapiens
Experts from the Natural History Museum, The Francis Crick Institute, and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Jena have joined together…
