Colin Barras
An instinct for numbers? Ancient humans and even some animals evolved the ability to count
Although researchers once thought that humans were the only species with a sense of quantity, studies since the mid-twentieth century ...
Food from thin air: Turning CO2 into protein could provide sustainable food source
Bacteria could feed the world. While some bacteria turn CO2 into valuable fuels, other bacteria – called ‘hydrogenotrophs’ – can ...
Artificial photosynthesis: Synthetic chloroplasts as solar-powered drug factories
There’s a new way to eat carbon dioxide. Researchers have built an artificial version of a chloroplast, the photosynthetic structures ...
Lee Berger: Paleoanthropologist ‘rewriting’ human evolutionary history
[Lee Berger] is the palaeoanthropologist behind the recent discoveries of not one but two new species of human ancestor. The ...
Fossilized child’s tooth offers rare clue about our Denisovan ancestors
Three becomes four. The extraordinarily sparse fossil record of the Denisovans – an ancient form of human – has gained ...
‘Live vaccines’: Recoding bacteria’s genome could lead to more effective immunizations
[G]eneticists used a new technique to recode 5 per cent of the Salmonella bacterium’s genome, introducing a record number of engineered ...
Vegetarian Neanderthals? Turns out they weren’t all meat eaters
Neanderthals living in prehistoric Belgium enjoyed their meat – but the Neanderthals who lived in what is now northern Spain ...
Brief oasis of oxygen could have supported complex life 2.3 billion years ago
Earth is thought to have begun to develop its modern, oxygen-rich atmosphere as recently as 800 million years ago. This ...
Discovered ancient footprints hint males had multiple “wives”
Laetoli in northern Tanzania is the site of iconic ancient footprints, capturing the moment – 3.66 million years ago – ...
Blind use visual cortex region of brain to solve math problems
While a leading theory suggests our visual experiences are linked to our understanding of numbers, a study of people who ...
Great minds grow alike? Skulls of Neanderthals, modern humans show remarkable similarities
Evidence from Neanderthals’ skulls suggests that their large brains grew in the same way as ours do. That in turn ...
Neanderthal brain development, cognition may have resembled ours
Great minds grow alike. Evidence from Neanderthals’ skulls suggests that their large brains grew in the same way as ours ...
CRISPR may destroy herpes virus present within almost all humans
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Almost all of us ...
Hobbit ancestors may have resided in Flores 700,000 years ago
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. We may have finally ...
DNA analysis reveals ancient Europe shaped by several human migrations, not cultural shifts
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. We know that modern ...
Was big human nose shaped directly by natural selection or by other evolutionary changes?
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. It’s an evolutionary mystery ...
Synthetic ‘origami’ DNA delivers drugs within body
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. This tiny origami has ...
Gene editing unnatural? Actually it happens frequently in nature
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. The UK Human Fertilisation ...
Genetically engineered bacterial cells ‘talk’ to each other
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. When cells cooperate, they ...
Forensic analysis reveals hominid who lived 430,000 years ago was murdered
It's the coldest of cold cases: a forensic analysis suggests that an ancient human who lived 430,000 years ago died ...
Earliest case of irrigation-loving parasite found in Fertile Cresent
The law of unintended consequences may have a longer history than we thought. At a Neolithic settlement in the region ...
Alzheimer’s gene risk varies by sex
Carrying a copy of the "Alzheimer's gene" doesn't significantly raise a man's risk of developing the disease. The gene does ...
New bipolar treatments possible with stem cell model of disease
Skin cells taken from people with bipolar disorder have been turned into brain cells. These in turn are offering up ...
Superfemale mice have secret male DNA
Even by mouse standards, the African pygmy mouse is tiny. It weighs just 5 grams, and is little more than ...
New era of fast genetic engineering
Sequencing genomes has become easy. Understanding them remains incredibly hard. While the trickle of sequence information has turned into a ...
Neural stem cells pulled from rat’s brain using magnet
It's like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Researchers have reached inside the brain of a rat and pulled ...
Genes linked to left-handedness identified
Are you a south paw? Gibble-fisted? A cuddy-wifter? A new study into what makes people left-handed shows that some of ...
DNA strands trying to reconnect, caught on film
Time-lapse microscopy has captured severed DNA strands in the act of pairing up with partners from the wrong chromosomes – ...