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Contents
- Sweet Confusion: Does high fructose corn syrup deserve such a bad rap?
- Closed Thinking: Without scientific competition and open debate, much psychology research goes nowhere
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Read articles, including Science News stories written for ages 9-14, on the
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Contents
- A mind for math: A part of the brain associated with making memories may also predict success in learning math
- Teens take home science gold: A low-cost, self-driving vehicle; battery alternatives and analyses of galaxy clusters claim top prizes at a global high school science competition
- Flagging loose bolts: “Smart alert washer” automatically flags when a nut is coming loose, warning of potential danger
Archaeology
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Excavations at tar pits in Venezuela suggest that the fossils found there may rival those of the famed Rancho La Brea tar pits in Southern California.
Rincón
- Physicists are exploring the use of muons generated by cosmic rays to explore Mayan archaeological sites and to probe the interiors of volcanoes and shipping containers.
- Scientists are refining carbon dating techniques to make the archaeological timeline more precise.
- Sediments in a few lakes in northeastern Canada were not scoured away during recent ice ages, a surprising find that could prove a boon to climate researchers.
- A 6,000-year-old city in what's now northeastern Syria developed when initially independent settlements expanded and merged, unlike other nearby cities that grew from a core outward.
- A new map shows that Angkor, the world's largest preindustrial city, covered more than 1,000 square kilometers of what is now Cambodia and possessed an elaborate canal system.
- Perforated shells found in a Moroccan cave indicate that northern Africans made symbolic body ornaments 82,000 years ago, long before Europeans did.
- Researchers have found the oldest solar observatory in the Americas, a group of 13 towers first used around 300 B.C. to mark the positions of sunrises and sunsets from summer to winter solstice.
- Ancient Americans cultivated and ate chili peppers at least 6,100 years ago, setting the stage for the spicy condiment to spread throughout the world after Columbus' voyages to the New World.
- Excavations at a 4,600-year-old village in southern England indicate that it was occupied by the builders of nearby Stonehenge and hosted feasts where people assembled before transporting the dead to the huge circle of stones, which served as an ancestor memorial.
- New evidence indicates that seasonal rainfall more than 7,000 years ago turned Africa's eastern Sahara desert into a savannalike area that attracted an influx of foraging groups.
- Researchers have identified three perforated shells dating to around 100,000 years ago as beads, making these finds the oldest known examples of personal decoration.
- Controversial new discoveries suggest that our half-size evolutionary cousins who lived on the Indonesian island of Flores as recently as 12,000 years ago carried on a stone-toolmaking tradition passed down from the island's original colonizers more than 700,000 years ago.
- Chemical analyses of residue from jars found in King Tutankhamen's tomb have yielded the first evidence of white wine in ancient Egypt.
- Researchers have announced the restoration and translation of a 1,700-year-old papyrus document containing the Gospel of Judas, an account that portrays Judas Iscariot as a hero, not as Jesus' betrayer.
- Domesticated varieties of wheat emerged gradually in the prehistoric Near East over a roughly 3,000-year span.
- Fossilized plant remains recovered from a nearly 4,000-year-old house in the Andes Mountains of southern Peru show that highland inhabitants cultivated maize and imported other plant foods from lowland forests at around the time that large societies developed in the region.
- Excavators of a pyramid in northeastern Guatemala announced the discovery of the earliest known Maya writing.
- Estimated to be roughly 700,000 years old, stone tools recently unearthed along England's southeastern coast are the earliest evidence of human ancestors in northern Europe.
- Archaeological excavations at a prison near Megiddo, Israel, have unearthed the remains of what may be one of the region's oldest Christian churches.
- A hieroglyphic-covered stone panel discovered at an ancient Maya site in Guatemala last April adds weight to suspicions that the settlement was Site Q, an enigmatic city about which researchers have long speculated.
- Radiocarbon analyses of material from a French cave indicate that Neandertal and modern human occupations of the site overlapped around 36,000 years ago, possibly explaining why Neandertals began to employ some new toolmaking techniques around that time.
- New radiocarbon dates from one of ancient Rome's underground cemeteries, or catacombs, indicates that these structures were built in the Jewish community more than a century before early Christians started to do the same.
- Increasingly, researchers are using geophysical techniques such as ground-penetrating radar and magnetometers to target their excavations.
- New archaeological finds indicate that by about 3,250 years ago, Egypt had become a major glass producer and exporter.
- Archaeologists working near the Red Sea have discovered remains of an Egyptian port that emerged around 4,000 years ago, including two caves used by mariners for storage and for religious ceremonies.
- The Olmec, a society that more than 3,000 years ago inhabited what is now Mexico's Gulf Coast, acted as a mother culture for communities located hundreds of miles away, according to a chemical analysis of pottery remains and local clays from ancient population sites in the area.
- Ancient Chinese people may have used diamonds to polish their stone axes to mirrorlike finishes.
- Analyses of ancient pottery have yielded evidence the people living in northern China 9,000 years ago concocted a fermented, winelike drink from rice, honey, and fruit.
- Recent excavations reveal that the city of Pompeii, famed for its burial by an eruption of Italy's Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, experienced several devastating landslides in the centuries preceding its demise.
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Coverage of the 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting
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The Year in Science 2012
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Three-part series on the scientific struggle to explain the conscious self
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