Along with defending against pathogens, the body’s innate immune system helps to protect the stability of our genomes in unexpected ways — ways that have important implications for the development of cancer, researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) are discovering. In a pair of recent papers, scientists in the lab of molecular biologist … Read more
Example of a cylinder seal (left) and its design imprinted onto clay (right). Credit: Franck Raux 2001 GrandPalaisRmn (Musée du Louvre) The origins of writing in Mesopotamia lie in the images imprinted by ancient cylinder seals on clay tablets and other artifacts. A research group from the University of Bologna has identified a series of … Read more
Ancient buildings and landscape modifications—including public plazas, agricultural terraces, and field walls—blanket uplands. Credit: Archaeologists using laser-sensing technology have detected what may be an ancient Mayan city cloaked by jungle in southern Mexico, authorities said Wednesday. The lost city, dubbed Valeriana by researchers after the name of a nearby lagoon, may have been as densely … Read more
by Michela Mariani, Anna Florin, Haidee Cadd, Matthew Adeleye and Simon Connor, The Conversation Flowchart explaining the approach used in the present study to quantify past changes in fuels within the shrub layer (i.e., ladder fuels). Credit: Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adn8668 Increased land management by Aboriginal people in southeastern Australia around 6,000 years ago cut … Read more
The key to unlocking the secrets of distant planets starts right here on Earth. Researchers at Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo, and Hokkaido University have developed a model considering various atmospheric chemical reactions to estimate how the atmosphere — and the first signs of life — evolved on Earth. “Ancient Earth was nothing like … Read more
Geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, together with an international team of researchers, have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs — the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art — by analysing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 millennia and stretching from Siberia to Britain. The aurochs roamed … Read more
An aurochs skull, from St Petersburg. Credit: Prof Dan Bradley, Trinity College Dublin. Geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, together with an international team of researchers, have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs—the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art—by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 millennia … Read more