Happy news! She Has Her Mother’s Laugh won the 2019 Communications Award from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can read about all this year’s winners here. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, August 15, 2019”
The New York Times, August 8, 2019
Scientists have discovered what is by far the oldest evidence of human occupation at extreme altitudes: a rock shelter strewn with bones, tools and hearths 11,000 feet above sea level. People lived at the site, in the mountains of Ethiopia, as long as 47,000 years ago.
The research, reported on Thursday in the journal Science, contradicts the long-held view that high elevations were the last places on Earth settled by humans.
That notion was based more on assumptions than hard evidence, it now appears. In East Africa, paleoanthropologists have long focused their attention on the Rift Valley and other archaeological sites at lower elevations.
Continue reading “In the Ethiopian Mountains, Ancient Humans Were Living the High Life”
The New York Times, July 18, 2019
In a laboratory at the Stanford University School of Medicine, the mice are seeing things. And it’s not because they’ve been given drugs.
With new laser technology, scientists have triggered specific hallucinations in mice by switching on a few neurons with beams of light. The researchers reported the results on Thursday in the journal Science.
The technique promises to provide clues to how the billions of neurons in the brain make sense of the environment. Eventually the research also may lead to new treatments for psychological disorders, including uncontrollable hallucinations.
Continue reading “Why Are These Mice Hallucinating? Scientists Are in Their Heads”
The New York Times, July 10, 2019
A skull fragment found in the roof of a cave in southern Greece is the oldest fossil of Homo sapiens ever discovered in Europe, scientists reported on Wednesday.
Until now, the earliest remains of modern humans found on the Continent were less than 45,000 years old. The skull bone is more than four times as old, dating back over 210,000 years, researchers reported in the journal Nature.
The finding is likely to reshape the story of how humans spread into Europe, and may revise theories about the history of our species.
Continue reading “A Skull Bone Discovered in Greece May Alter the Story of Human Prehistory”
Happy Fourth of July weekend! Recently, I taped a conversation with Bill Nye and his co-host Corey Powell on their new podcast, Science Rules, about She Has Her Mother’s Laugh. My daughter Charlotte first got the science bug in grade school by watching DVDs of Bill Nye the Science Guy. So I invited her to join me on the trip down to New York to meet her icon (knowing that she’d never forgive me if I went solo).
Once we got there, the producers invited her to join the conversation, since we were going to talk about heredity. I know I’m totally biased, but I think she did great. Charlotte’s heading to college this fall with plans to major in astrophysics–but maybe she should keep radio in mind. You can listen here. Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, July 5, 2019”