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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound

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Researchers have investigated how spiders listen to their environments through webs and found that the webs match the acoustic particle velocity for a wide range of sound frequencies. Playing sound ranging from 1 Hz to 50 kHz for the spiders and measuring the spider silk motion with a laser vibrometer, they found the sound-induced velocity of the silk was the same as the particles in the air surrounding it. This confirmed the mechanism that these spiders use to detect their prey.

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Engineers achieve a wide field-of-hearing acoustic metalens free from aberrations.

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As often as four days a week, Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island fly loops overhead as pilots practice touch-and-go landings. The noise is immense. New research shows that the noise isn't just disruptive -- it presents a substantial risk to public health.

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Researchers developed a silk fabric, which is barely thicker than a human hair, that can suppress unwanted noise and reduce noise transmission in a large room.

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Researchers have debunked a 75-year-old theory about how humans determine where sounds are coming from, and it could unlock the secret to creating a next generation of more adaptable and efficient hearing devices ranging from hearing aids to smartphones.

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A new documentary has recreated the face of a 75,000-year-old female Neanderthal whose flattened skull was discovered and rebuilt from hundreds of bone fragments by a team of archaeologists and conservators.

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Researchers have provided new age estimates and revised provenance information for the Liujiang human fossils, shedding light on the presence of Homo sapiens in the region. Using advanced dating techniques including U-series dating on human fossils, and radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating on fossil-bearing sediments, the study revealed new ages ranging from approximately 33,000 to 23,000 years ago. Previously, studies had reported ages of up to 227,000 years of age for the skeleton.

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Scientists have applied a dynamic model of the landscape to patterns of human migration into Sahul, the combined continent of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea.

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It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites, little information exists about the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups. A new study challenges this notion by presenting compelling isotopic evidence of a strong preference for plants among 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Morocco. This is the first time a significant amount of plant consumption has been measured for a pre-agricultural population, shedding new light on the dietary practices of ancient human societies.

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A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition -- entitled 'String Quartet No. 1 'Polar Energy Budget'-- is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.

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Researchers have identified a variant in the gene TBX1 as key in the development of the unique morphology at the base of the skull. TBX1 is present at higher levels in humans than in closely related hominins. Low TBX1 also occurs in certain genetic conditions causing altered skull base morphology. This study provides a greater understanding of human disease and evolution.

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Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins -- and produced a 'bizarre' evolutionary pattern for the Homo lineage -- according to a new study that revises the start and end dates for many of our early ancestors.

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A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study. The 'copy-paste' errors allowed animals to keep one copy of their genome or genes for fundamental functions, while the second copy could be used as raw material for evolutionary innovation. Events like these, at varying degrees of scale, occurred constantly throughout the bilaterian evolutionary tree and enabled traits and behaviours as diverse as insect flight, octopus camouflage and human cognition.

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An international team of scholars present the earliest clear archaeological and biomolecular evidence for the raising of chickens for egg production, based on material from 12 archaeological sites spanning one and a half millennia. The research indicates that the domestic chicken, now a staple in diets around the world, is not as ancient as previously thought.

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New DNA sequencing technologies have identified the historical remains of George Washington's grandnephews, Samuel Walter Washington and George Steptoe Washington Jr., and their mother, Lucy Payne Washington, from unmarked, fragmentary bones left at the Harewood family cemetery in Charles Town, West Virginia, in the mid-1800s.

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A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian Plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early stages of their migration out of Africa. It highlights the period between 70,000 to 45,000 years ago when human populations did not uniformly spread across Eurasia, leaving a gap in our understanding of their whereabouts during this time frame.

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Biologists use a novel method of simultaneous acoustic tagging to gain insights into the link between whale communication and behavior

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By evaluating sound vibrations produced by the airflow induced within the lungs and bronchial tree during normal breathing as well as those produced by the larynx during vocalizations, doctors can identify potential disease-related abnormalities within the respiratory system. Researchers demonstrate the efficacy of ultrasound technology to detect low-amplitude movements produced by vocalizations at the surface of the chest. They also demonstrated the possibility of using the airborne ultrasound surface motion camera to map these vibrations during short durations so as to illustrate their evolution.

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Seattle may have experienced its own Swift Quake last July, but at an August 2023 concert Taylor Swift's fans in Los Angeles gave scientists a lot of shaking to ponder. After some debate, a research team concluded that it was likely the dancing and jumping motions of the audience at SoFi Stadium -- not the musical beats or reverberations of the sound system -- that generated the concert's distinct harmonic tremors.

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A team develops an ultrasensitive broadband transparent ultrasound transducer.