Showing 20 articles starting at article 221

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

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

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have managed to sequence multiple individuals from a remote Neanderthal community in Siberia. Among these thirteen individuals, the researchers identified multiple related individuals -- among these a father and his teenage daughter. The researchers were also able to use the thirteen genomes to provide a glimpse into the social organization of a Neanderthal community. They appear to have been a small group of close relatives, consisting of ten to twenty members, and communities were primarily connected through female migration.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A research team has developed a skin-attachable auditory sensor, which recognizes human voices in noisy environments and when users wear facemasks. The new sensor will be useful in microphones that facilitate communication in disaster situations and for healthcare devices that diagnose respiratory diseases.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Study shows that not only are loud vehicles flying overhead a cause of noise pollution-related stress, the effect of that stress remains on the body even after noise levels have decreased.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Jazz must swing -- jazz musicians agree on that. However, even 100 years after the beginnings of jazz, it is still unclear what exactly constitutes the swing feel. With a sophisticated experiment and data analyses on more than 450 well-known jazz solos, physicists together with psychologists have unraveled a secret of swing. They were able to demonstrate that certain systematic deviations in timing are a key component of swing. These microtiming deviations are so small that they are not perceived as such even by professional jazz musicians, who nonetheless are using them unconsciously.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists have shown that in one in every 4,000 births, some of the genetic code from our mitochondria -- the 'batteries' that power our cells -- inserts itself into our DNA, revealing a surprising new insight into how humans evolve. Researchers show that mitochondrial DNA also appears in some cancer DNA, suggesting that it acts as a sticking plaster to try and repair damage to our genetic code.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A trove of fossils in China, unearthed in rock dating back some 436 million years, have revealed for the first time that the mysterious galeaspids, a jawless freshwater fish, possessed paired fins.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

An international team has reconstructed the genome organization of the earliest common ancestor of all mammals. The reconstructed ancestral genome could help in understanding the evolution of mammals and in conservation of modern animals. The earliest mammal ancestor likely looked like the fossil animal 'Morganucodon' which lived about 200 million years ago.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Interdisciplinary research in southern Ethiopia enabled the deciphering of eastern Africa's climatic heartbeat and shows how key phases of climate change influenced human evolution, dispersal and innovation.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Mutations can drastically help or hurt the odds of an organism surviving and reproducing. Researchers have created a computer program called ExtRaINSIGHT that tracks the history of harmful mutations throughout human evolution. They've discovered several regions of the genome are especially vulnerable to mutations, meaning any mutations there could lead to severe or lethal consequences.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The risk of transmission from an infected person on a wind instrument is generally much lower than for people who sing or speak, provided that one spends the same amount of time in their vicinity, according to a new study.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have developed cutting-edge technology to diagnose patients with heart failure in record time. The state-of-the-art technology uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to create detailed 4D flow images of the heart. But unlike a standard MRI scan, which can take up to 20 minutes or more, the new 4D heart MRI scan takes just eight minutes.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

In the largest early-medieval population study to date, an interdisciplinary team consisting of geneticists and archaeologists analyzed over 400 individuals from ancient Britain, Ireland, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The results show in detail one of the largest population transformations in the post-Roman world.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A team of scientists has discovered the earliest gibbon fossil, a find that helps fill a long-elusive evolutionary gap in the history of apes.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The skulls of tetrapods had fewer bones than extinct and living fish, limiting their evolution for millions of years, according to a latest study.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The question of what makes modern humans unique has long been a driving force for researchers. Comparisons with our closest relatives, the Neanderthals, therefore provide fascinating insights. The increase in brain size, and in neuron production during brain development, are considered to be major factors for the increased cognitive abilities that occurred during human evolution. However, while both Neanderthals and modern humans develop brains of similar size, very little is known about whether modern human and Neanderthal brains may have differed in terms of their neuron production during development. Researchers now show that the modern human variant of the protein TKTL1, which differs by only a single amino acid from the Neanderthal variant, increases one type of brain progenitor cells, called basal radial glia, in the modern human brain.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists use genomic data to resolve the phylogeny of zygnematophyte algae and pinpoint several emergences of multicellularity in the closest known relatives of terrestrial plants.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers develop a method to identify aortic valve dysfunction using complex network analysis that is accurate, simple to use, and low-cost. They used heart sound data to create a complex network of connected points, which was split into sections, and each part was represented with a node. If the sound in two portions was similar, a line was drawn between them. In a healthy heart, the graph showed two distinct clusters of points, with many nodes unconnected. A heart with aortic stenosis contained many more correlations and edges.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The modalities and date of emergence of bipedalism remain bitterly debated, in particular because of a small number of very old human fossils. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, discovered in 2001 in Chad, is considered to be the oldest representative of the humankind. The shape of its cranium suggests a bipedal station. The description of three limb bones of Sahelanthropus confirms habitual bipedalism, but not exclusively.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Research has established that there are traces of Neandertal DNA in the genome of modern humans. Now an exploratory study that assessed the facial structure of prehistoric skulls is offering new insights, and supports the hypothesis that much of this interbreeding took place in the Near East -- the region ranging from North Africa to Iraq.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Abundant internet claims about the acoustic power of the Saturn V suggest that it melted concrete and lit grass on fire over a mile away, but such ideas are undeniably false. Researchers used a physics-based model to estimate the rocket's acoustic levels and obtained a value of 203 decibels, which matched the limited data from the 1960s. So, while the Saturn V was extremely loud, that kind of power is nowhere near enough to melt concrete or start grass fires.