Category: Articles
The New York Times, April 3, 2025
After listening to hundreds of hours of ape calls, a team of scientists say they have detected a hallmark of human language: the ability to put together strings of sounds to create new meanings.
The provocative finding, published Thursday in the journal Science, drew praise from some scholars and skepticism from others.
Continue reading “In the Calls of Bonobos, Scientists Hear Hints of Language”
The New York Times, March 26, 2025 (with Apoorva Mandavilli)
The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics.
The government’s rationale is that the Covid pandemic has ended, which “provides cause to terminate Covid-related grant funds,” according to an internal N.I.H. document viewed by The New York Times.
Continue reading “H.H.S. Scraps Studies of Vaccines and Treatments for Future Pandemics”
The New York Times, March 5, 2025
Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools.
Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants.
Continue reading “Trove of Ancient Axes Shows Early Humans Made Tools From Bones”
The New York Times, February 26, 2025
For generations, scientists looked to the East African savanna as the birthplace of our species. But recently some researchers have put forward a different history: Homo sapiens evolved across the entire continent over the past several hundred thousand years.
If this Africa-wide theory were true, then early humans must have figured out how to live in many environments beyond grasslands. A study published Wednesday shows that as early as 150,000 years ago, some of them lived deep in a West African rainforest.
The New York Times, February 19, 2025
The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick — the influenza viruses that send us to bed and the smallpox viruses that may send us to the grave.
But healthy people are rife with viruses that don’t make us ill. Scientists estimate that tens of trillions of viruses live inside of us, though they’ve identified just a fraction of them. A vast majority are benign, and some may even be beneficial. We don’t know for sure, because most of the so-called human virome remains a mystery.
Continue reading “Trillions of Viruses Live in Your Body. A.I. Is Trying to Find Them.”