With the help of a tiny chip implanted in the brain, human beings who cannot move their own limbs are able to move a robotic arm, in one case taking a drink of coffee on one’s own for the first time in fifteen years. "The smile on her face was a remarkable thing to see. For all of us involved, we were encouraged that the research is making the kind of progress that we had all hoped," said the tri ... (More)

Confirmed dates for the world’s oldest art just got older, according to the report of an international research team published in the May 14 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dating back about 37,000 years, the art consists of engravings made in stone that has since fallen from the ceiling of a cave at Abri Castanet in southwestern France. While not as visually arresti ... (More)

What makes humans different from the great apes? What makes our brains larger and more complex? We know that our DNA is remarkable similar to other mammals. What subtle genetic changes can explain such huge behavioral differences? One surprising possibility is that our brains are bigger and more complex not so much because of new genes but because of gene duplication. One gene in particular—SRGAP ... (More)

Resveratrol, the much-hyped ingredient found in red wine and sold widely as a nutritional supplement, is known to improve the health and extend the lifespan of mice. Can it do the same for humans? Without nasty side effects? And at what dose? A study published today in Cell Metabolism helps unravel a few more of resveratrol’s mysteries. In particular, researchers have shed new light on how resver ... (More)

Agriculture probably originated in the Middle East about 11,000 years ago. Over the next six thousand years, it spread to other parts of the globe, including northern Europe, gradually replacing hunting and gathering as the primary means of human survival. How did it spread? Were hunter-gatherers converted to the efficiencies of agriculture? Or did farmers from the south spread north, bringing thei ... (More)

Life as we know it is based on DNA and RNA. Could it have been otherwise? Might other worlds have life based on a different “genetic” system? We may never know for sure. But we do know that synthetic biology is moving briskly toward the goal of engineered life beyond DNA and RNA. Recall that in “DNA” and “RNA,” the “NA” part stands for “nucleic acids.” It’s the four nucleic ac ... (More)

One of our newest technologies has just shed new light on one of our oldest. When did our human ancestors learn to control and use fire? Armed with the latest high tech tools, an international team of researchers has pushed the date back to 1 million years. That’s 300,000 years earlier than previous unambiguous dates. The massive Wonderwerk Cave is in northern South Africa on the edge of the Kala ... (More)

New calculations suggest that there may be as many as 60 billion habitable planets just in our own Milk Way galaxy, maybe more. At least 100 of these planets may be as close as 30 light-years away. Researchers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) carefully sampled 102 red dwarf stars in the southern skies. Red dwarfs are very common in our galaxy. Based on observations and calculations, the E ... (More)

Another important step has just been taken toward achieving the medical promise of stem cell research. For the first time, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, have reprogrammed skin cells directly into multipotent stem cells. Over the past five years, stem cell researchers have learned how to induce or reprogram skin cells to become pluripotent st ... (More)

Thousands of early human settlements have been located using computers and satellite images, according to a paper published on March 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers used computers to analyze satellite images of a 23,000 square kilometer region in the Upper Khabur Basin of northeastern Syria. The finding? They believe they can identify 14,312 possible sites of ... (More)