Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
A gel cocktail uses the body’s sugars to ‘grow’ electrodes in living fish
A chemical reaction with the body’s own sugars turned a gel cocktail into a conducting material inside zebrafish brains, hearts and tail fins.
- Archaeology
Homo sapiens may have brought archery to Europe about 54,000 years ago
Small stone points found in a French rock-shelter could have felled prey only as tips of arrows shot from bows, scientists say.
- Science & Society
Lots of people feel burned out. But what is burnout exactly?
Researchers disagree on how to define burnout, or if the phenomenon is really another name for depression. Helping people cope at work still matters.
- Life
Fungi don’t turn humans into zombies. But The Last of Us gets some science right
Fungi like those in the post-apocalyptic TV show are real. But humans’ body temperature and brain chemistry may protect us from zombifying fungi.
- Health & Medicine
A new treatment could restore some mobility in people paralyzed by strokes
Electrodes placed along the spine helped two stroke patients in a small pilot study regain control of their hands and arms almost immediately.
- Health & Medicine
Psychedelics may improve mental health by getting inside nerve cells
Psychedelics can get inside neurons, causing them to grow. This might underlie the drugs’ potential in combatting mental health disorders.
- Health & Medicine
3-D maps of a protein show how it helps organs filter out toxic substances
Images of LRP2 in simulated cell environments reveal the structural changes that let it catch molecules outside a cell and release them inside.
- Health & Medicine
A chemical imbalance doesn’t explain depression. So what does?
The causes of depression are much more complex than the serotonin hypothesis suggests
- Anthropology
Hominids used stone tool kits to butcher animals earlier than once thought
Finds in Kenya push Oldowan tool use back to around 2.9 million years ago, roughly 300,000 years earlier than previous evidence.
- Health & Medicine
How fingerprints form was a mystery — until now
A theory proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in the 1950s helps explain how fingerprint patterns such as arches and whorls arise.
- Science & Society
We prioritize family over self, and that has real-world implications
Two studies show how family bonds improve personal and mental health, suggesting policy makers should shift away from individualistic mindsets.
- Humans
50 years ago, scientists debated when humans first set foot in North America
In 1973, archaeologists debated when people first arrived in the Americas. Mounting evidence suggests its much earlier than they thought.
