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Categories: Archaeology: General, Offbeat: Computers and Math

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Scientists have used paleogenomics to trace 10,000 years of human immune system evolution. They analyzed the genomes of more than 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the past ten millennia. They were able to date the increase in frequency of most of the mutations that are advantageous in defending against pathogens to after the Bronze Age, 4,500 years ago. The scientists also observed that mutations conferring a higher risk of developing inflammatory disorders have become more frequent over the past 10,000 years.

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The movement of people across the Bering Sea from North Asia to North America is a well-known phenomenon in early human history. Nevertheless, the genetic makeup of the  people who lived in North Asia during this time has remained mysterious due to a limited number of ancient genomes analyzed from this region. Now, researchers describe genomes from ten individuals up to 7,500 years old that help to fill the gap and show geneflow from people moving in the opposite direction from North America to North Asia.

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The analysis of ancient DNA allows scientists to trace human evolution and make important discoveries about modern populations. The data revealed by ancient DNA sampling can be valuable, but the human remains that carry this ancient DNA are often those of the ancestors of modern Indigenous groups, and some communities have expressed concerns about the ethics of sampling by outside parties. A group of scientists make the case for involvement of descendant communities in all aspects of the research process.

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Smallpox was once one of humanity's most devastating diseases, but its origin is shrouded in mystery. For years, scientific estimates of when the smallpox virus first emerged have been at odds with historical records. Now, a new study reveals that the virus dates back 2,000 years further than scientists have previously shown, verifying historical sources and confirming for the first time that the disease has plagued human societies since ancient times.

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An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.

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A new study based on 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes analysed together with the genomic data of 16,638 present day Scandinavians resolve the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia -- encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age and later periods. A surprising increase of variation during the Viking period indicates that gene flow into Scandinavia was especially intense during this period.

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What genetic changes are responsible for the evolution of phenotypic traits? This question is not always easy to answer. A newly developed method now makes the search much easier.

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Brain-computer interface companies like Neuralink are in the news a lot these days for their potential to revolutionize how humans interact with machines, but electrodes are not the most brain-friendly materials -- they're hard and stiff, while brains are soft and squishy, which limits their efficacy and increases the risk of damaging brain tissue.  A new hydrogel-based electrode developed at the Wyss Institute solves that problem by providing a tunable, conductive scaffold that human neurons and other cell types feel right at home in. Not only does the scaffold mimic the soft, porous conditions of brain tissue, it supported the growth and differentiation of human neural progenitor cells (NPCs) into multiple different brain cell types for up to 12 weeks. The achievement is reported in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Not only can the new electrode be used to study the formation of human neural networks in vitro, it could enable the creation of implantable devices that more seamlessly integrate with a patient's brain tissue, improving performance and decreasing risk of injury.

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More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought. Overtime, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system that is in many ways suggestive of contemporary market-based economies.

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While you may be just starting to reap the advantages of 5G wireless technology, researchers throughout the world are already working hard on the future: 6G. One of the most promising breakthroughs in 6G telecommunications is the possibility of Visible Light Communication (VLC), which is like a wireless version of fiberoptics, using flashes of light to transmit information. Now, a team has announced that they have invented a low-cost, innovative way to harvest the waste energy from VLC by using the human body as an antenna. This waste energy can be recycled to power an array of wearable devices, or even, perhaps, larger electronics.

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Creating smart sensors to embed in our everyday objects and environments for the Internet of Things (IoT) would vastly improve daily life -- but requires trillions of such small devices. A professor believes that emerging alternative semiconductors that are printable, low-cost and eco-friendly could lead the way to a cheaper and more sustainable IoT.

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A team of engineers and neuroscientists has demonstrated for the first time that human brain organoids implanted in mice have established functional connectivity to the animals' cortex and responded to external sensory stimuli. The implanted organoids reacted to visual stimuli in the same way as surrounding tissues, an observation that researchers were able to make in real time over several months thanks to an innovative experimental setup that combines transparent graphene microelectrode arrays and two-photon imaging.

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A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). The findings indicate that the growth of the ice sheets -- and the resulting drop in sea level -- occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested.

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Archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.

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Marvel at the tiny nanoscale structures emerging from labs, and it's easy to imagine you're browsing a catalog of the world's smallest pottery: itty-bitty vases, bowls, and spheres. But instead of making them from clay, the researchers designed these objects out of threadlike molecules of DNA, bent and folded into complex three-dimensional objects. These creations demonstrate the possibilities of a new open-source software program.

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Researchers have developed a strategy for creating ultrahigh-resolution, complex 3D nanostructures out of various materials.

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An international team of researchers has recently demonstrated for the first time the use of a new lensless ultrafast X-Ray method to image phase transitions. This new method enables the direct observation of the dynamics of quantum materials at the nanoscale.

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Spread across vast distances, the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean are thought to have been populated by humans in two distinct migrations beginning approximately 3,330 years ago. The first followed a northern route out of what is today the Philippines and the second followed a southern route from Taiwan and New Guinea. People arrived on the islands between these routes -- now making up the Federated States of Micronesia -- about 1,000 years later. But a new finding by sea-level researchers suggests that the islands in Micronesia were possibly settled much earlier than supposed and that voyagers on the two routes may have interacted with one another.

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Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire, a new study argues.

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While the Diprotodon -- the extinct megafauna species that is distantly related to wombats but was the size of a small car -- is commonly (but incorrectly) thought of as Australia's 'giant wombat', researchers have shed light on a large species that does belong in the modern-day wombat family. The complete skull of this true fossil giant wombat, found in a Rockhampton cave in Queensland, Australia and estimated to be around 80,000 years old, has been described for the first time.