A rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) about 1 minute before it swung off using the car's rear window wiper, breaking it

Ancient Egyptian princesses were probably trained in using bows and daggers and put themselves at risk of serious injury, hint the characteristics of their bones. My latest for @newscientist.com 🧪 🏺 www.newscientist.com/article/2579...

Ancient Egyptian princesses buried with weapons may have been fighters | New Scientist

The mummified daughters of pharaohs who lived thousands of years ago have bone changes that suggest they fought with bows and daggers

newscientist.com

We might all be dying in the heat, but my v3g patch is loving it. I've tried growing aubergines (egg plant) many times in my greenhouse in Somerset and they've never worked until this year. The courgettes (zucchini) are also doing brilliantly. It's like a Mediterranean garden. 🧪 🍆🥒 #gardening

Just spotted this red admiral butterfly (Vanessa atalanta). Potentially just fitting in 100 wing raises as postprandial exercise. Its movements look so effortless. Not a tremor from those antennae as it flexes. #Butterflies #BugSky #InsectThursday #nature #wildlife #BigButterflyCount 🧪 🦋

It's not often a new monkey species is described. This roaring, snorting, orange-lipped colobus I wrote about for @livescience.com is a cracker. Officially called Colobus congoensis, it is also known by the name "lik­weli" in the Kilanga language. 🐒 🧪 www.livescience.com/animals/prim...

Orange-lipped monkey that roars and snorts deep in Congo rainforest is new species to science

A striking new monkey species, Colobus congoensis, was discovered deep in the Congo rainforest and has been scientifically described for the first time.

livescience.com

Under a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface

A mathematical formula inscribed on a wall at the Maya site of Xultun in Guatemala has revealed the name of an important Maya mathematician-astronomer for the first time. And the person was called Sak Tahn Waax, or ‘White-Chested Fox’. 🧪 🏺 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Mathematics formula found on Maya wall rivals insights of ancient masters

Mathematical texts from a Maya site in Guatemala identify an astronomer called Sak Tahn Waax.

nature.com

This Nature game on how to terraform Mars is fun: www.nature.com/immersive/d4... 🧪 🌑 🌍 🌱 Not that I'd suggest that terraforming Mars is something we should seriously consider, when we have a world here that is more suited for us than Mars would ever be (we just need to stop buggering Earth up)

Can you terraform Mars? Try Nature’s game

Once the realm of science fiction, the idea of making Mars habitable is gaining traction. Nature consulted with key scientists to develop this experimental adventure.

nature.com

I wrote about some fascinating modelling for @newscientist.com on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which regulates the climate across Europe, Africa and the Americas. 🧪 🌊

New Scientist@newscientist.com · last mo.

The fate of the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe’s climate warm depends on our carbon emissions and the rate of ice melt from Greenland, but there is a chance that a shutdown is already inevitable

I loved writing this story for @newscientist.com Orangutans are generally pretty solitary and mothers and their young often hang out without other company, but it seems the mothers plan playdates for their offspring. 🧪 🐒 🦊 #primates #orangutans #parenthood www.newscientist.com/article/2532...

Orangutan mothers seem to plan playdates for their offspring

Female orangutans are generally solitary, but they travel more and eat less in an apparent effort to ensure their offspring have someone to play with

newscientist.com

The famous "Wedges" paper was used repeatedly to shut us up when we argued against the continued use of fossil fuels, and, esp, against carbon capture and storage and the mass use of bioenergy. "But these eminent scientists say ..." Now we learn BP co-authored it. www.propublica.org/article/wedg...

How BP Execs Influenced a Climate Study That Shaped a Generation of Global Policy

BP sponsored an elite Princeton research center to address the climate problem without getting off fossil fuels. Its key work, a paper known as “Wedges,” guided climate discourse for a generation.

propublica.org

Are you annoyed with the anthropomorphizing language being used in the "AI" discourse, but not sure how to talk about this stuff without it? @nannainie.bsky.social and I have got you covered: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

How to talk about

Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie In our op-ed for Tech Policy Press ("We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI'"), we made the case against the...

buttondown.com

And here's one on how sperm whales in the Mediterranean Sea might be splitting into two groups with their own dialects. It's a communication shift that could take hundreds or thousands of years given the long lives of sperm whales. 🧪 🐋 🦑 www.livescience.com/animals/whal...

'Weirdos of the sperm whale world' appear to be evolving 2 different dialects, audio recordings suggest

Thousands of recordings of sperm whale communications in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that the population might be splitting into two groups with their own dialects.

livescience.com

Oops, getting behind on posting about my articles again. Here's one that went up yesterday on a genomic survey of Neanderthal remains revealing that some of the last surviving ones were quite genetically diverse, so inbreeding wasn’t a major cause of their extinction about 40k years ago. 🧪 🏺

New Scientist@newscientist.com · last mo.

Genetic analysis of Neanderthals in north-western Europe reveals that this population was surprisingly genetically diverse, hinting that inbreeding didn’t lead to the species' demise

Apparently, teeth from important members of the Maya civilisation were kept in a cave far from their tombs. It may have been done to ensure they made it to the underworld. 🧪 #archaeology 🏺 #history #genetics My latest for @newscientist.com www.newscientist.com/article/2531...

Elite Maya people had teeth placed in a cave far from their tombs

A cave in Belize contains teeth from dozens of important Maya people buried elsewhere, which may attest to a ritual intended to ensure their passage to the underworld

newscientist.com

I'm not _quite_ sure I understand this, but it seems a very cool preprint. Living materials harness microscopic disorder to build a robust structure, with cellular activity acting as a knob to tune when and how tissues cross critical points of phase transitions. #biology 🧪

Lena Schindler@lena-schindler.bsky.social · last mo.

I am thrilled to share my PhD work with @nicolettapetridou.bsky.social @embl.org: www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... A fun collaboration with Bernat Corominas-Murtra, Adrián Aguirre-Tamaral, @bart-smeets.bsky.social , Jef Vanghel and Tom Belpaire! Read the story in the comments below ⤵️

🎯

This is a fascinating discovery. For the first time, a study has shown that older mice given a transplant of gut microbiomes from younger animals boost their brain plasticity. This means their brains are better able to adapt to changes. 🧪 #health #microbiomes www.newscientist.com/article/2531...

Faecal transplant makes the brains of old mice act young again

Older mice that received a faecal microbiome transplant from younger animals went on to have improved brain plasticity, which suggests their brains could overcome a neurological condition that is typi...

newscientist.com

Out of the mouths of babes... The current results of The Week Junior poll on whether the UK should join the EU. 82% saying Yes. @theweek.com #news #politics #wisdom

I find pigeons weirdly fascinating (partly because of all the ones missing toes you see in cities), so it was a joy to write this article for @newscientist.com about how pigeons lock their eyes in place when flying 🧪 🕊️ 🐦 www.newscientist.com/article/2530...

Pigeons lock their eyes in place when they are flying

Bird-mounted headsets and backpacks have revealed the surprising things pigeons do with their eyes when on the wing

newscientist.com

The thing I find most disturbing about military drones being trained on data from Pokémon Go is that my children used to play it, so might have unknowingly helped train military drones to operate without GPS. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Pokémon Go data trained AI that could assist military drones in war zones

Location scans from the globally popular augmented reality game have helped train AI to recognise and interpret physical spaces

theguardian.com

Just found this stunning example of a scarlet tiger moth (Callimorpha dominula) looking very weak on a step outside. After a little rest indoors and a bit of sugar solution it thankfully flew off again 🧪 🦋 #moths #lepidoptera #butterflies #insects #nature #bugsky #wildlife

This discovery amazed me: A whale "graveyard" extending over 1,200 km. The remains or fossils of about 480 whales found in a total survey area of about 0.64 square kilometres, with one of the fossils dating back more than 5 million years. 🧪 🐋 🦑 🦊 #cetaceans www.livescience.com/animals/whal...

Scientists discover 5 million-year-old whale graveyard stretching for hundreds of miles in the Indian Ocean

Researchers have discovered a "megasite" of dead whales along with new species of marine life feasting on the corpses.

livescience.com

When is an "extinct" volcano not actually extinct? More often than you might expect 🧪 #volcanology #geology www.livescience.com/planet-earth...

Some 'extinct' volcanoes may just be going through a growth spurt, before they 'wake up in this catastrophic stage,' emerging research suggests

A volcano that erupted after being asleep for more than 100,000 years is leading more volcanologists to say we must redefine volcano activity to ensure eruptions don't surprise us.

livescience.com

This is a stunning find. Marks inside an Iron Age skull that was entombed in a cairn in Scotland suggest that someone removed the dead woman's brain after she died. 🧪 #archaeology #history www.newscientist.com/article/2529...

Iron Age Britons may have removed the brains of the dead

Scrape marks inside a skull and sharpened limb bones in a set of remains found in Scotland may be evidence of unusual Iron Age funerary rituals

newscientist.com

Here's another I wrote for @newscientist.com. The frozen droppings of mammoth-eating rodents have unveiled hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary history in the Arctic... There's a sentence I never thought I would write. 🧪

New Scientist@newscientist.com · 2mo ago

A complex ecosystem of woolly mammoths, bison, horses and big cats has been elucidated by studying the faeces of small rodents that probably ate the bigger animals

Trump nodding off during his own photo op made me laugh an inexplicable amount

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2mo ago

Trump is now sitting back in his chair and dozing off

If you're a scientist feeling blue, just have a look in your junk email: "Dear Professor Professor, I hope this message finds you well. I recently read your research on Science & Technology - Other Topics, and I am deeply impressed by your significant contributions to this field...." 🧪

Some of the microbes lingering on the 5300-year-old remains of “Ötzi the Iceman” may still be metabolically active, despite being kept in icy conservation conditions. My latest for @newscientist.com 🧪 #archaeology #microbiomes #prehistory #history #mummies www.newscientist.com/article/2528...

Ötzi's frozen remains may harbour metabolically active microbes

Researchers studying a 5300-year-old mummified man have identified bacteria that lived in his gut when he was alive, as well as cold-tolerant fungi that colonised his body after death

newscientist.com

And here's another, this one for @newscientist.com, on the biggest genome-wide association study yet of Alzheimer’s. It has identified 48 new gene locations associated with the condition, which could help us find drug targets to prevent it. 🧪 #health #medicine www.newscientist.com/article/2528...

Huge study of Alzheimer’s genetics identifies new drug targets

Almost 50 more genes have been flagged as being linked to Alzheimer’s, along with changes in activity in crucial cells that disappear as dementia progresses

newscientist.com