Early Australians arrived in their thousands

Prehistoric Australia was settled by thousands, not just a handful, of humans, suggesting deliberate rather than accidental colonisation of the continent, according to new research.

Brain size points to origins of 'hobbit'

A new study of fossil skulls has weighed into the debate on the identity of the ancestor of the so-called 'hobbit'.

[Blogger Note: The dimensions are those of an australopithecine, not Homo habilis or erectus.]

3D printing creates synthetic 'tissue'

Synthetic material capable of performing some of the functions of living cells has been built using a specially modified 3D prototype printer. Developed by researchers at Oxford University, the new materials, called 'droplet networks' could eventually be used to replace damaged human tissue or deliver drugs to specific locations.

3-D View Of Quarks Inside Proton

Physicists are measuring how the most basic known building blocks of nature — quarks — are arranged to make up protons, key pieces of the atomic nucleus.  The findings could be a step toward eventually understanding the three-dimensional internal structure of protons and neutrons, the particles forming the heart of an atom.  It now turns out that the quarks take up positions that depend largely on the direction of their spin: those with opposite spin tend to find themselves in opposite sides of the proton.

New findings indicate that in a proton, quarks with spin in the up direction (red and blue) tend to gather in the left half of the proton as seen by an incoming electron. Down-spinning quarks (green) tend to gather in the right half.

Scientists use robots to replicate ant colony behaviour

Scientists say they have replicated the behaviour of a moving ant colony using little robots. The researchers aimed to learn how ants orient themselves in the mazelike pathways along the ground surface from their nest to various food sources. These trails often feature a tree-like system of branching points and can extend as far as a quarter of a kilometre for some ant species.

Dream-reading machine in the works?

Scientists have applied computer processing to brain scans to find out with some accuracy what images pop up in sleeping people's heads.