The ability to detect and react to the smell of a potential threat is a precondition of our and other mammals’ survival. Using a novel technique, researchers have been able to study what happens in the brain when the central nervous system judges a smell to represent danger. The study indicates that negative smells associated…

Dinosaurs and pterosaurs may be known for their remarkable size, but a newly described species that lived around 237 million years ago suggests that they originated from extremely small ancestors. The fossil reptile, named Kongonaphon kely, or ‘tiny bug slayer,’ would have stood just 10 centimeters tall. The study may help explain the origins of…

Geologic activity on Earth appears to follow a 27.5-million-year cycle, giving the planet a ‘pulse,’ according to a new study. «Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time. But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random,» said Michael Rampino, a geologist…

As far back as ancient Rome, spider silk has been used as a remedy to treat everything from skin lesions to warts. In the past, doctors have covered open wounds in cobwebs or advised patients to place cocoons on infected teeth. In modern times, however, the literature contains conflicting reports of whether or not spider…

Scientists have engineered mammalian cells to be activated using ultrasound. The method paves the way toward non-invasive versions of deep brain stimulation, pacemakers and insulin pumps. «Going wireless is the future for just about everything,» says senior author Sreekanth Chalasani, an associate professor in Salk’s Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory. «We already know that ultrasound is safe,…

Researchers have created a new gene editing tool called Retron Library Recombineering (RLR) that can generate up to millions of mutations simultaneously, and ‘barcodes’ mutant bacterial cells so that the entire pool can be screened at once. It can be used in contexts where CRISPR is toxic or not feasible, and results in better editing…

Researchers who rush in after storms to study the behavior of spiders have found that extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary impact on populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds of survival. Raging winds can demolish trees, defoliate entire canopies and scatter debris across forest…

In a new study, researchers were able to reconstruct the nutrition of stone-age humans. The study’s authors collected about 25 lines of evidence from about 400 scientific papers from different scientific disciplines, dealing with the focal question: Were stone-age humans specialized carnivores or were they generalist omnivores? «So far, attempts to reconstruct the diet of…

Why are the red, yellow, and blue colors used in the world’s oldest knotted-pile carpet still so vivid and bright, even after almost two and a half thousand years? Researchers have now been able to uncover the secrets behind the so-called Pazyryk carpet using high-resolution x-ray fluorescence microscopy. The Pazyryk carpet is the world’s oldest…

Human feces don’t usually stick around for long — and certainly not for thousands of years. But exceptions to this general rule are found in a few places in the world, including prehistoric salt mines of the Austrian UNESCO World Heritage area Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut. Now, researchers who’ve studied ancient fecal samples (or paleofeces) from these mines…