A genetic mutation may have helped modern humans adapt to smoke exposure from fires and perhaps sparked an evolutionary advantage over their archaic competitors, including Neandertals, according to a team of researchers.
Evolution
Aug 2, 2016
0
751
American politicians have long been expected to uphold a certain veneer: powerful, influential and never vulnerable. New Penn State research has found that these idealized forms of masculinity may also help explain support ...
Social Sciences
Jan 4, 2021
172
5278
There may be more habitable planets in the universe than we previously thought, according to Penn State geoscientists, who suggest that plate tectonics—long assumed to be a requirement for suitable conditions for life—are ...
Astronomy
Jul 30, 2018
3
668
A new study provides the most accurate estimate of the frequency that planets that are similar to Earth in size and in distance from their host star occur around stars similar to our Sun. Knowing the rate that these potentially ...
Astronomy
Aug 14, 2019
8
1570
Like cosmic lighthouses sweeping the universe with bursts of energy, pulsars have fascinated and baffled astronomers since they were first discovered 50 years ago. In two studies, international teams of astronomers suggest ...
Astronomy
Jan 17, 2017
0
2220
(Phys.org) —A pair of newly discovered stars is the third-closest star system to the Sun, according to a paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters. The duo is the closest star system discovered since ...
Astronomy
Mar 11, 2013
16
0
Adding noise to enhance a weak signal is a sensing phenomenon common in the animal world but unusual in manmade sensors. Now Penn State researchers have added a small amount of background noise to enhance very weak signals ...
General Physics
Sep 3, 2020
3
800
New analysis of the DNA sequence of the male-specific Y chromosomes from all living species of the great ape family helps to clarify our understanding of how this enigmatic chromosome evolved. A clearer picture of the evolution ...
Evolution
Oct 6, 2020
4
1035
A thousand years ago, Native Americans in South America used multiple psychotropic plants—possibly simultaneously—to induce hallucinations and altered consciousness, according to an international team of anthropologists.
Archaeology
May 6, 2019
7
1109
The mechanism behind one of the first stages of coal creation may not be what we thought it was, according to a team of researchers who found that microbes were responsible for coal formation and production of methane in ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 11, 2021
2
1001
