Best of week 05 / 2025

Romanian fossils show hominins in Europe 500,000 years earlier than thought

Research led by the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Ohio University has found evidence of hominin activity at a Romanian fossil site dating to at least 1.95 million years ago. This discovery pushes back the known date of European hominins by half a million years and establishes Grăunceanu as the oldest confirmed European evidence of hominin activity.

Religious 'mercy release' of hybrid groupers can have significant ecological impact

Ecologists from the School of Biological Sciences (SBS) and the Swire Institute of Marine Science (SWIMS) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) have identified significant ecological risks associated with the release of hybrid groupers into Hong Kong's coastal waters, a practice often linked to religious 'mercy release' rituals.

Deep beneath California's Sierra Nevada, Earth's lithosphere may be peeling away

The processes that form continental crust from the denser basaltic rocks of the upper mantle may make the lower lithosphere denser than the underlying mantle. One theory holds that the lower lithosphere splits away and sinks into the mantle in a process called foundering. Conclusive evidence of foundering, however, has been hard to come by.

Student project discovers superconductor with hallmark of unconventional superconductivity

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered a new superconducting material. They combined iron, nickel, and zirconium, to create a new transition metal zirconide with different ratios of iron to nickel. The findings are published in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds.

Researchers report the first-ever total synthesis of a promising mushroom-derived compound

Natural compounds from plants and animals have long been used in drug development, but mushrooms remain underexplored despite their rich chemical potential. Now, researchers from Japan have successfully developed the first method to synthesize inaoside A, a compound derived from the edible mushroom Laetiporus cremeiporus. This achievement will help better understand more of its bioactive properties and pave the way for similar mushroom-derived compounds in pharmaceuticals and functional foods.

Largest study of its kind proves 'bird brain' is a misnomer

It's difficult to know what birds "think" when they fly, but scientists in Australia and Canada are getting some remarkable new insights by looking inside birds' heads.

Wild baboons fail mirror test for self-awareness, anthropologists find

A study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that while the baboons noticed and responded to a laser mark shining on their arms, legs and hands, they did not react when they saw, via their mirror reflection, the laser on their faces and ears.

M87* observations catch the black hole's turbulent accretion flow

Using observations from 2017 and 2018, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has advanced our understanding of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*). This study marks a significant step toward multi-year analysis at horizon scales, in order to investigate the black hole's turbulent accretion flow. It utilizes a vastly improved set of simulations that is a factor of three larger than previous ones. The results include major contributions from the MPIfR in Bonn, Germany.

Improved radon gas mapping finds nearly 25% of Americans living in highest risk areas

Researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have assembled a national database with millions of multi-day indoor radon measurements from 2001 to 2021. Findings reveal that nearly 25% of the U.S. population may be exposed to radon concentrations exceeding 148 Bq/m3, a level associated with cancer risks.

'Troublesome' radio galaxy 32 times the size of Milky Way spotted

Astronomers have discovered an extraordinary new giant radio galaxy with plasma jets 32 times the size of our Milky Way.