Seven generations of a prehistoric family mapped with ancient DNA

A Neolithic farming community from 6,500 years ago in modern-day France was mostly one big family. DNA analysis of 94 individuals found at a burial site revealed that two-thirds were members of a single family that spanned seven generations. No half-siblings were uncovered, suggesting that monogamy was standard. And most adult women were not closely related to others in the group, which indicates that male descendants tended to stay put, whereas women moved around.

Giant-sloth art hints at human migration

What seem to be beautifully carved and polished pendants made from the bony plates of giant sloths (Glossotherium phoenesis) suggest that people lived alongside the huge mammals. That means humans made it to South America earlier than thought — some 27,000 years ago.

AI tools are designing entirely new proteins that could transform medicine

Tools that harness artificial intelligence (AI) are bringing the creation of custom proteins — until recently a highly technical and often unsuccessful pursuit — to mainstream science. Their creators are inspired by AI software that synthesises realistic images, such as Midjourney (which produced the viral ‘Pope in a puffa’ image). A similar conceptual approach, researchers have found, can churn out realistic protein shapes meeting criteria that designers specify — meaning, for instance, that it’s possible to speedily draw up proteins that should bind tightly to another biomolecule. And early experiments show that when researchers manufacture these proteins, a useful fraction do perform as the software suggests.

Brain Waves Synchronise When People Interact

The experience of being ‘on the same wavelength’ as another person is real. When people interact socially — by chatting, learning together or concocting a collaborative story — their brain waves synchronise: neurons in corresponding locations in the different brains fire at the same time. Although much about the phenomenon remains mysterious, scientists suspect that it is more than the result of two people seeing or hearing the same thing.

Oldest genetic data from a human relative found in 2-million-year-old teeth

The oldest genetic data of a relative of humans have been extracted from two-million-year-old teeth of the ancient hominin species Paranthropus robustus. The genetic data come from protein sequences rather than DNA, which tends to be less resilient. The researchers identified the sex of the hominins that the teeth belonged to, and confirmed that Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans are all more closely related to one another than they are to the Paranthropus. The jury is still out on whether ancient proteins will help bring consensus to the picture of hominin evolution, which is currently built largely from the shapes of bones.

Half-billion-year-old sea squirt could push back origins of vertebrates

An exquisitely preserved 500-million-year-old fossilised sea squirt offers new insight into the evolution of tunicates, the sister group to vertebrates and a key to unravelling our own evolutionary origins. The fossil resembles living tunicates that have two life stages: free-swimming larvae and adults that live rooted to the sea floor. This suggests that a crucial evolutionary moment — when sessile tunicates diverged from free-floating ones — happened 50 million years earlier than currently estimated on the basis of molecular clocks.

Early Universe seems to run at 20% speed

Researchers have spotted the earliest instance of cosmological time dilation, which makes time seem to run at one-fifth of today’s speed in the early Universe — a phenomenon explained by the general theory of relativity. Observing a quasar hailing from a time when the Universe was just one-tenth of its current age is “like watching a movie with the speed turned down”, says astrophysicist and study leader Geraint Lewis. Quasars are supermassive black holes surrounded by an extremely bright disc of hot gas and are among the oldest objects in the Universe. Previous observation of time dilation made using distant supernovae went back to only around half the age of the Universe, when time seemed to run at 60% of today’s speed.

Blogger Comments:

Time does not "run". Time is a dimension. Time dilation means that the time intervals between the ticks of a clock are longer, which means it takes longer for a clock to tick, which means that processes take longer to unfold. As space intervals expand, time intervals contract, so time intervals in the past were expanded relative to the present.

Dolphin mothers use ‘baby talk’ with their calves

Scientists have dubbed the sing-songy way that parents talk to babies “motherese.” Studies suggest this special baby talk helps infants bond with caregivers and learn the complexities of language. Now, scientists suspect we aren’t the only species with a special way of speaking to our youngest: Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) also raise the pitch of their voice when talking to their calves, according to a study published yesterday in PNAS.

Researchers made the discovery by analysing the whistles of female dolphins in Florida that were undergoing health assessments for ongoing research. The whistles mother dolphins produced around their babies reached higher pitches and exhibited a greater range of frequencies than ones they made when alone or around other dolphins, the team found — shifts similar to the ones human voices make when speaking motherese.