Cylinder symbols hint to origins of writing

Symbols engraved on cylinders that were used by traders to print motifs on clay tablets might have influenced the earliest-known form of writing. Researchers examined some of these cylinders from Mesopotamia, now southern Iraq, dating back to 4400 BC, around 1,000 years before the known invention of writing. They identified several symbols they think later developed into signs in ‘proto-cuneiform’, the precursor to the earliest version of written script. The findings support a theory first suggested in the 1990s by archaeologist Holly Pittman, but other experts caution that although some symbols on the cylinders might resemble those in proto-cuneiform, there is no obvious causal relationship linking them.

The world’s oldest tree? Genetic analysis traces evolution of iconic Pando forest

DNA from ‘Pando’ — a vast forest made up of a single root system sprouting nearly 50,000 cloned quaking aspen trees — seems to confirm that it is one of the oldest organisms on Earth. Researchers sequenced hundreds of samples from the Populus tremuloides and found that it is between 16,000 and 80,000 years old. They were also able to track patterns of genetic variation spread throughout the tree, offering clues about how it has adapted and evolved over the course of its lifetime.

Chemical swaps give parrots their colours

Dusky lory parrots (Pseudeos fuscata) have a unique genetic change that allows them to sport a rainbow of colours. Pigments in their feathers called psittacofulvins, which are only found in parrots, are made up of carbon chains of varying lengths. These chains have an aldehyde group at one end by default when they’re synthesised, which makes the pigment red. Researchers found a gene in the dusky lory’s genome that encodes an enzyme that can modify the aldehyde into a carboxyl group, which changes the pigment’s colour to yellow.

The ineffable quality of the human brain

Our brains allow us to do all sorts of things unique to humans: use sarcasm, solve crossword puzzles, envision our future. Their complexity also leaves us susceptible to conditions we don’t see in animals, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. An avalanche of data has started to reveal key differences between human and animal brains, but exactly what gives rise to our unique cognitive skills still isn’t totally clear.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the meaning potential of language is the 'elephant in the room' that gives rise to our unique cognitive skills. Semiotic phenomena require semiotic explanations. Material models of the brain are severely limited to explaining its material phenomena, such as the locations of its processes.

PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident

An ancient Maya city has been found “hidden in plain sight” beneath the jungle canopy in the Mexican state of Campeche. Archaeologists used a laser technique called LiDAR to scan the area, “accidentally” discovering the forgotten complex, which contains pyramids, amphitheatres and sports fields. They think the site, which they’ve named Valeriana, might have housed up to 50,000 people, which supports claims that Maya lived in complex cities or towns, not in isolated villages.

Physicists tame fundamental muon particles into highly controlled beam for first time

Researchers have accelerated muons — the heavier, unstable cousins of electrons — into a tightly controlled beam for the first time. A team at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai shot a laser at a stream of muons to bring the fast-moving particles to a near-standstill. Then, the researchers applied an electric field to accelerate these ‘cooled’ muons to around 4% of the speed of light. The feat takes researchers a step closer to making a muon collider, which would be smaller and cheaper than other current colliders, a reality.

DNA stores data in bits after epigenetic upgrade

An epigenetic upgrade allows DNA to store information as a binary code — the strings of 0s and 1s used by standard computers. Researchers developed a system in which short, prefabricated DNA “bricks” — with or without methyl groups — could be added to a reaction tube to form a growing DNA strand that represented a desired binary code. The encoded information could then be read using a DNA-sequencing technique that detects the methyl groups along the strand.

Ancient meteorite was ‘giant fertiliser bomb’ for life

A meteorite up to 200 times bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs might have acted as a “giant fertiliser bomb” that helped early microorganisms to thrive more than 3 billion years ago. The space rock would have caused a tsunami, partially evaporated the oceans and plunged Earth into darkness. On the plus side for Palæoarchæan life, it also released phosphorus and sloshed iron-rich water up from the deep.

Smallest fossilised dinosaur eggs ever found

Researchers in China have dug up the smallest known non-avian dinosaur egg at a construction site near the city of Ganzhou. At 29 millimetres long, the egg is about the size of a small strawberry. It was found in 2021 as part of a cluster of six eggs, and dated to be 80 million years old. Electron microscopy revealed that the eggs belonged to an unknown species, which the team named Minioolithus ganzhouensis.

AlphaFold reveals how sperm and egg hook up in intimate detail

Researchers have identified three proteins that work together as matchmakers between sperm and egg cells. They used the artificial-intelligence tool AlphaFold to predict the interactions between proteins of sperm cells. It predicted that three such proteins form a complex, which creates a place for an egg protein to bind.

Early galaxies are too big and too bright

Images from the James Webb Space Telescope are a portal to the past, allowing astrophysicists to study galaxies from the first billion years of the universe. These young galaxies appear bigger and brighter than our current theories about the evolution of the universe say they should be, leaving researchers to debate explanations for how these infant galaxies could have grown up so fast.

‘Stunning’ find in stone city of Petra

Geophysicists and archæologists have collaborated to discover an undisturbed burial site beneath the elaborate rock-cut Treasury building in Petra. After a non-invasive scan revealed temptingly tomb-like voids, digs confirmed the presence of 12 skeletal remains and a collection of grave artefacts. Researchers estimate that the remains might be from the height of the Nabataean society, which built the mountain fortress of Petra in what is now Jordan.

AI scans RNA ‘dark matter’ and uncovers 70,000 new viruses

A trawl of genomic samples archived in publicly available databases has revealed 70,500 RNA viruses that were previously unknown to science, many of them weird and nothing like known species. Researchers developed a deep-learning model to recognize the gene sequences that encode a key protein in the ubiquitous microorganisms. Looking at more than 10,000 samples from around the world, the team found new viruses in environments that included air, hot springs and hydrothermal vents.

Genome sequencing inside intact cells

A powerful new microscopy technique can simultaneously sequence an individual cell’s DNA and pinpoint the location of proteins inside it — all without having to break open the cell. Imaging DNA and proteins inside intact cells provides crucial information about how these molecules work together. The team behind the method, called expansion in situ genome sequencing, has already used it to study how ageing might alter the way that proteins in the nucleus interact with chromosomes.

Is this how complex life evolved?

With a tiny hollow needle and a bicycle pump, scientists have successfully kick-started an artificial endosymbiotic relationship by implanting bacteria into a fungus cell. These relationships, in which a microbial partner lives harmoniously within the cells of another organism, are thought to be what sparked the evolution of complex life. The systems could help researchers to understand how cell structures such as mitochondria and chloroplasts emerged more than a billion years ago. Researchers recreated a natural symbiosis by implanting the bacterium Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica into the fungi Rhizopus microsporus. When spores germinated, bacteria were also present in the cells of the next generation of fungi, showing that the endosymbiosis could be passed onto offspring.

This fish’s legs are made for walking — and tasting the sea floor

The northern sea robin (Prionotus carolinus) uses its six legs to stroll the ocean bottom and to taste the sea floor for buried prey. A detailed study of the unusual appendages has shed more light on how they help make the fish a spectacularly good hunter, and how P. carolinus repurposed its legs as sensory organs — as well as the evolutionary history of legs in the broader sea-robin family (Triglidae).

Carbon bond that uses only one electron seen for first time

Scientists have observed a single-electron covalent bond between two carbon atoms for the first time. Researchers synthesized a molecule with a stable ‘shell’ of fused carbon rings that stretched out a carbon–carbon bond in its centre. The pull makes it susceptible to losing one electron in an oxidation reaction, leaving the elusive one-electron bond. With the new finding, the team hopes to better understand what defines a chemical bond in the first place.

Bacteria can invert gene sequences

Bacteria have the capacity to flip sequences of their genes from back to front, which can generate two different proteins from a gene. For example, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron has a gene, thiC, that it can invert. One way round, it encodes for an enzyme needed to make the vitamin thiamine. The other way, it encodes a truncated protein. This ability seems to give the bacteria a survival advantage in different conditions. Researchers engineered bacteria that were ‘locked’ to either express the forward or the inverted version of thiC and examined the survival of the two populations of bacteria when grown at different concentrations of thiamine. Under conditions of low thiamine, bacteria that expressed the forward version of thiC dominated; when thiamine was high, the bacteria that expressed the inverted version of thiC had an advantage.

Octopuses and fish caught on camera hunting as a team

Octopuses and fish have been caught on camera teaming up to hunt for prey. Researchers caught 13 instances of the cross-species collaboration over 120 hours of footage, showing a big blue octopus (Octopus cyanea) working with different fish species to capture meals. Each of these scenes hinted at complex group dynamics, with different species adopting different roles.

Mathematicians discover new class of shape seen throughout nature

Mathematicians have described a new class of shape — soft cells. These shapes have corners that are deformed into thin points with internal angles of zero, which let them tessellate on a 2D plane with no gaps. Soft cells are common in nature, from the inside of onions to mollusc shells, but this new work is the first time they’ve been formally described.

How cells swap instant messages

Cells in our bodies are passing delicate, time-sensitive notes to each other. These notes come in the form of messenger RNA (mRNA), which cells have to neatly package in sacs called vesicles to send between cells. This year, researchers showed that cells in all three domains of life - archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes - can send these messages, and even that they can be used as weapons between species. There are still questions to answer, such as whether other molecules packed into vesicles are necessary for mRNA’s message to land.

Entangled quarks seen for first time

For the first time, scientists have observed quantum entanglement — a state in which particles intermingle and can’t be described separately — in fundamental particles called top quarks. Physicists had no reason to suspect that quarks wouldn’t allow themselves to be entangled, but researchers say this measurement, achieved by analysing over 1 million pairs of quarks created in collisions between protons, could pave the way for future high-energy tests of the phenomenon.

The crustaceans that smell their way home

Tiny crustaceans called mysids (Hemimysis margalefi) can use ‘smell’ to find their way back from the open sea to the caves where they live. When placed in Y-shaped containers in which one arm contains seawater from their home cave, the shrimp-like creatures tended to opt for the water they were used to. Researchers showed that water from each cave had a unique chemical signature, which they suspect the mysids are using to find their way back in low-light conditions.

‘The standard model is not dead’: ultra-precise particle measurement thrills physicists

Researchers at CERN have calculated the mass of a fundamental particle called the W boson: 80,360.2 million electronvolts. The result quashes suggestions of a problem with the ‘standard model’ — physicists’ best description of particles and forces — raised by a discrepancy between the measured W boson mass and what the standard model predicts that was reported in 2022.

AlphaFold reveals how viruses evolved

Protein structures predicted by AI models have revealed some twists in the evolution of flaviviruses — a group that includes hepatitis C, dengue and Zika viruses. Researchers used DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 and Meta’s ESMFold to generate more than 33,000 predicted structures for proteins from 458 flavivirus species. They already uncovered some surprises. For example, the hepatitis C virus infects cells using an entry system similar to one seen in the pestiviruses — a group that includes animal pathogens like swine fever. Another big surprise was the discovery that some flaviviruses have an enzyme that seems to have been stolen from bacteria.

Rapa Nui’s population 'crash' debunked by ancient DNA

A study of ancient genomes has dispelled the theory that early inhabitants of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) ravaged its ecosystem and caused the population to crash. Researchers analysed the DNA of ancient and modern Rapa Nui individuals and found no sign of a ‘population bottleneck’ that would have indicated a collapse. Genomes from ancient Rapa Nui people are predominantly of ancestries similar to those of other Pacific islanders, but around 10% of their genetic material can be traced to ancestors from coastal areas of what is now called South America. The findings suggest that Rapa Nui people made contact with people from these regions hundreds of years before Europeans first visited the island.

Marmosets use specific ‘names’ for one another

Marmosets use specific vocal labels to address other individual members of their species. When researchers separated pairs of marmosets with a barrier, they found that they used distinct ‘phee calls’ for the monkey on the other side. Besides humans, only dolphins and elephants have been recorded using similar labels for their fellow animals.

‘Nuclear clock’ breakthrough paves the way for super-precise timekeeping

Physicists have demonstrated all the ingredients of a nuclear clock — a device that keeps time by measuring tiny energy shifts inside an atomic nucleus. The breakthrough came from probing the nuclei of a rare isotope with a laser device called a frequency comb. Although the set-up isn’t technically a clock, because it hasn’t been used to measure time, “such impressive results make the development of a nuclear clock seem possible”, says atomic physicist Marianna Safronova. “It’s really one of the most exciting papers in recent times.”

The biology of smell is a mystery — AI is helping to solve it

We smell by detecting molecules around us — but knowing the chemical structure of a molecule tells you almost nothing about its odour. Even categorising what we perceive is difficult: there is no palette of scent ‘primary colours’ as there is for vision. And olfactory receptor proteins are hard to work with, so what they look like and how they function has mostly been guesswork. But that isn’t stopping scientists from trying, with help from innovations in structural biology, data analytics and artificial intelligence.

An asteroid might have flipped Ganymede

Four billion years ago, Jupiter’s moon Ganymede might have been permanently turned by an asteroid 20 times bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. Researchers analysed distinctive furrows on the moon’s surface that point almost directly away from the gas giant. The furrows could be the remnants of a crater formed by an asteroid that was around 300 kilometres wide, say scientists. The impact might have turned Ganymede’s face away from Jupiter and reoriented its former far side towards the planet.

Neolithic builders had an understanding of science

The Neolithic farmers and herders who built a massive stone chamber in southern Spain nearly 6,000 years ago seem to have possessed a good rudimentary grasp of physics, geometry, geology and architectural principles. Using data from a high-resolution laser scan, as well as unpublished photos and diagrams from earlier excavations, archæologists pieced together a probable construction process for the monument known as the Dolmen of Menga.

India’s pioneering mission bolsters idea that Moon’s surface was molten

The first-ever analysis of soil near the Moon’s south pole has found further evidence that the lunar surface melted shortly after it formed. The data come from India’s pioneering Chandrayaan-3 mission, which deployed a rover on the Moon last August that found the soil mainly comprised the mineral ferroan anorthosite. Previous landers have found similar results at other locations, suggesting the composition of the surface is uniform. This supports the theory that the Moon originated from material scattered into space when a large impactor struck the newly formed Earth.

Spider makes fireflies flash as bait

Orb-weaving spiders (Araneus ventricosus) make trapped male Absocondita terminalis fireflies flash like females to tempt more insects into their web. The spiders bite and wrap a flashing male firefly using a different technique than the one used on other prey. This method seems to change the repeating light sequence of the male firefly — which can still flash after being bitten — to one that resembles a female’s single pulse. The signal seems to tempt more males to their demise.

Primordial black holes are too scarce to explain dark matter

Primordial black holes (PBHs) would have to be at least ten times more abundant to support the theory that they make up a substantial proportion of the dark matter in our Galaxy. Researchers looked for black holes that formed during the early history of the Universe by observing stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). A 20-year survey called the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) found 13 candidate signals. The detections involved an effect known as microlensing, in which a PBH (or other object) deflects and distorts the light from a star located farther away than the PBH, producing multiple magnified images of the star. The copies cannot be distinguished because they are too close to each other, but their combined brightness shows a characteristic increase as the PBH passes through the line of sight of the star (upper panel).

Dinosaur-killing Chicxulub asteroid formed in Solar System’s outer reaches

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was formed beyond the orbit of Jupiter. When the object struck what is now Chicxulub, Mexico 66 million years ago, the enormous explosion left a layer of asteroid material all over Earth. Researchers looked at an element preserved in that layer, ruthenium, and found that it matched the make-up of the type of asteroid that formed in the outer Solar System, rather than the type that was produced in the inner region.

Geology’s biggest mystery: when did plate tectonics start to reshape Earth?

Stonehenge’s enigmatic centre stone was hauled 800 kilometres from Scotland

Chemical analysis of tiny crystals in Stonehenge’s central Altar Stone suggest that it came from Scotland — and not from Wales as previously thought. The fingerprint of zircon, rutile and apatite crystals in the stone allowed it to be traced to the Orcadian Basin, which includes parts of northeastern Scotland and the Orkney Islands. Whether the six-tonne monolith was transported by land or by sea is hotly debated.

Reservoir of liquid water found deep in Martian rocks

Reservoirs 11.5 to 20 kilometres below the surface of Mars might hold liquid water. If so, it would be the first found on the planet. The evidence comes from data gathered by NASA’s InSight lander, which retired in 2022. InSight monitored seismic waves created by Marsquakes, which suggest that the planet has a layer of fractured rocks saturated with liquid water deep underground.

What your DNA says about your ancient relatives

After 10 generations — roughly 300 years — the number of ancestors that two people share will start to converge. Ancient DNA techniques are allowing scientists to connect modern people to their ancestors who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. The findings could answer historical questions but also raise ethical dilemmas.

Mathematicians Reinvent the Wheel in Higher Dimensions to Solve Decades-Old Geometry Problem

Mathematicians have created a new family of shapes, similar to a multidimensional guitar pick, that roll like a wheel in higher dimensions. Wheels and spheres roll smoothly without wobbling because they are objects with constant width. In two and three dimensions, mathematicians have previously created smaller rolling objects called Reuleaux triangles and Meissner bodies — both similar in shape to guitar picks — that have constant width but less volume than wheels and spheres. Now a concise three-page proof offers a solution for higher dimensions.

Mars rover finds possible signs of ancient Red Planet life

These tiny ‘leopard spots’, discovered in a rock on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover, could be possible signs of microbes that once lived on the red planet. “On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilised record of microbes living in the subsurface,” says astrobiologist and Perseverance team member David Flannery. Without returning a rock sample to Earth, it will be difficult to further investigate the spots’ origin. “We have zapped that rock with lasers and X-rays and imaged it literally day and night from just about every angle imaginable,” says the rover’s project scientist Ken Farley. “Scientifically, Perseverance has nothing more to give.”

Did complex life start on Snowball Earth?

More than 500 million years ago, the globe was covered in glaciers and sea ice. This Snowball Earth seems hostile to life, yet it was probably during this time that single-celled organisms first evolved into complex, multicellular creatures. One possible answer to this conundrum: when seawater gets colder, it gets more viscous, so individual cells could have started to stick together to move through it more efficiently in search of food. In experiments with modern single-celled green algae, cells living in viscous gels formed coordinated groups to keep swimming.

Heaviest element yet within reach after major breakthrough

Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make superheavy elements, opening the door to creating the heaviest element ever and adding another row to the periodic table. Scientists used a beam of titanium to make a known superheavy element, livermorium — element 116. If they’re able to make elements 119 and 120, as planned after an equipment upgrade, they will be the first documented from the eighth ‘period’. In this row, scientists expect to find atoms with so-far unseen electron configurations.

Mystery oxygen source discovered on the sea floor — bewildering scientists

Something is pumping out large amounts of oxygen at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, at depths where a lack of sunlight makes photosynthesis impossible. The find has surprised scientists and the source remains a mystery. The oxygen might be generated by metal-rich mineral deposits, or nodules. To researchers’ surprise, they measured voltages of up to 0.95 volts across the surface of the nodules. It is possible that the nodules catalyse the splitting of water into oxygen and hydrogen, but more experiments are needed.

Dogs might have evolved to read our emotions

Centuries of co-evolution seem to have led to dogs being able to sense our emotional states. When dogs were played the sounds of people crying or humming, they appeared more stressed by the sad sounds than by the neutral one. And they’re not just learning from being around us. Pet pigs — who were also raised alongside people but whose species played a very different role in human societies — seemed to find the humming more upsetting.

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As other researchers have previously suggested, this is the result of artificial selection by humans.

Our last common ancestor

The shared forebearer of all life — known as the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) — lived around 4.2 billion years ago, ate carbon dioxide and hydrogen, and produced acetate that might have fed other life. Researchers inferred information about our great-great-grandblob’s genetics and biology by tracing duplicated, lost and mutated genes back up the family tree. LUCA probably possessed an early immune system, too — hinting that it lived in an established ecosystem full of microbes and pathogens.

First fossil chromosomes discovered in freeze-dried mammoth skin

Scientists have discovered intact chromosomes preserved in the skin of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) that met its end some 50,000 years ago — a feat previously thought to be impossible. The team also revealed the spatial organization of the mammoth’s DNA molecules and the active genes in its skin, including one responsible for giving the animal its fuzzy appearance. The study is the first to report the 3D structure of an ancient genome, says molecular archaeologist Ludovic Orlando.

Stars hint at an unusual black hole lurking in our Galaxy

Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope point to an elusive intermediate-size black hole in the star cluster ω Centauri. Midsize black holes occupy the no-man’s land between the ‘super massive’ ones thought to lie at the centre of most galaxies and much smaller ones that have about as much mass as a single large star. So far, most candidates have turned out to be neutron stars upon closer inspection.

Huge neutrino detector sees first hints of particles from exploding stars

Japan’s Super-Kamiokande observatory is seeing what might be the first hints of neutrinos from exploding stars. Neutrinos are subatomic particles that can come from various cosmic sources; those from inside supernovas could provide information about potentially new physics occurring under extreme conditions. Although the data from Super-K are still too weak to claim a definitive discovery, researchers hope to eventually prove that neutrinos are so stable that those from ancient supernovas are still around.

Ultra-detailed brain map shows neurons that encode words’ meaning

For the first time, individual brain cells have been seen to respond to the essence of words. Researchers recorded the activity of around 300 neurons each in 10 people who had electrodes implanted in their brains to manage epilepsy. Only a few neurons fired for each word when the participants listened to short sentences. Words that fell into similar categories — actions, food or animals — as well as words that could be associated — such as ‘duck’ and ‘egg’ — triggered similar brain activity. To an extent, the researchers could determine what people were hearing by watching their neurons fire.

Denisovans’ survival secrets revealed

The enigmatic ancient humans known as Denisovans hunted marmots, eagles and even hyenas to thrive high on the Tibetan plateau for well over 100,000 years. “It’s at high altitude. It’s cold. It’s not a nice place to be as a hominin,” says archaeologist Frido Welker, one of the researchers who analysed thousands of animal bone fragments from a cave in northern China.