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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Computer Science: Encryption

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Archaeologists and primatologists have shown that stone tool using chimpanzees in West Africa have distinct and recognizable material cultures.

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Tiny crystals in ancient animal dung serve as key evidence in a new analysis suggesting the possibility that hunter-gatherers at Abu Hureyra, Syria, may have tended small numbers of animals just outside their dwellings between 12,800 and 12,300 years ago.

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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.

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Computer scientists have succeeded in developing a method for systematically finding the optimal quantum operation sequence for a quantum computer. They have developed a systematic method that applies optimal control theory (GRAPE algorithm) to identify the theoretically optimal sequence from among all conceivable quantum operation sequences. This method is expected to become a useful tool for medium-scale quantum computers and is expected to contribute to improving the performance of quantum computers and reducing environmental impact in the near future.

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Scientists have developed a mathematical description of what happens within tiny magnets as they fluctuate between states when an electric current and magnetic field are applied. Their findings could act as the foundation for engineering more advanced computers that can quantify uncertainty while interpreting complex data.

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A vast paleogenetic study reveals insights on migration patterns, the expansion of farming and language development from the Caucasus over western Asia and Southern Europe from the early Copper Age until the late middle ages.

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A modern scientific analysis of ancient stone tools is challenging long-held beliefs about what caused radical change on the island of Crete, where the first European state flourished during the Bronze Age: the 'Minoan civilization.'

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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.

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A new study into the multipurpose uses of boomerangs has highlighted the hardwood objects were used to shape the edges of stone tools used by Australian Indigenous communities.  The research demonstrated how boomerangs could function as lithic (or stone) tool retouchers by investigating the use-wear generated on the boomerangs' surfaces during retouching activities. It was found that these use-wear impacts on boomerangs comparable to those observed on Paleolithic bone retouching tools, which date back to more than 200,000 years ago.

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Researchers have shown that a component of modern computer processors that enables different areas of the chip to communicate with each other is susceptible to a side-channel attack. An attacker can monitor how traffic from two different cores on a processor interferes with each other to extract secret information, like a cryptographic key.

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Researchers find that stem cells in the developing brain of modern humans take longer to divide and make fewer errors when distributing their chromosomes to their daughter cells, compared to those of Neanderthals.

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Beaver fur was a symbol of wealth and an important trade item in 10th Century Denmark, according to a new study.

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A method known as quantum key distribution has long held the promise of communication security unattainable in conventional cryptography. An international team of scientists has now demonstrated experimentally, for the first time, an approach to quantum key distribution that is based on high-quality quantum entanglement -- offering much broader security guarantees than previous schemes.

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An international team has successfully implemented an advanced form of quantum cryptography for the first time. Moreover, encryption is independent of the quantum device used and therefore even more secure against hacking attempts.

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Many people and companies worry about sensitive data getting hacked, so encrypting files with digital keys has become more commonplace. Now, researchers have developed a durable molecular encryption key from sequence-defined polymers that are built and deconstructed in a sequential way. They hid their molecular key in the ink of a letter, which was mailed and then used to decrypt a file with text from a classic story.

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For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

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New genetic research from remote islands in the Pacific offers fresh insights into the ancestry and culture of the world's earliest seafarers, including family structure, social customs, and the ancestral populations of the people living there today.

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Scientists reveal an advanced, innovative method that they have developed and used to detect nonvisual traces of fire dating back at least 800,000 years -- one of the earliest known pieces of evidence for the use of fire. The newly developed technique may provide a push toward a more scientific, data-driven type of archaeology, but -- perhaps more importantly -- it could help us better understand the origins of the human story, our most basic traditions and our experimental and innovative nature.

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Researchers say people with developmental dyslexia have specific strengths relating to exploring the unknown that have contributed to the successful adaptation and survival of our species.

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Up to now, protecting hardware against manipulation has been a laborious business: expensive, and only possible on a small scale. And yet, two simple antennas might do the trick.