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Video: Look inside Siberia’s Denisova cave, where researchers discovered bones of our mysterious relatives

Anna Funk | Discover | 
The Denisovans are named after Denisova Cave in Siberia. Until 2019, it was the only place where archaeologists found bones ...
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Evolutionary quirk: Humans are defined by ‘singular vulnerability’ to heart attacks

Cody Cottier | Discover | 
There are many things that set us humans apart from other species: large brains, bipedalism, a predilection for puns. But ...
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Human carelessness one of the ‘biggest risks if we encounter extraterrestrial life’

Erica Naone | Discover | 
As humans explore the solar system, the tantalizing possibility of discovering extraterrestrial life continues to pop up. But the goal ...
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Unraveling the genetic mystery of Skeleton Lake, an ancient Indian site filled with hundreds of human bones

Gemma Tarlach | Discover | 
At the mysterious Skeleton Lake in northern India, the dead are talking, revealing surprises through centuries-old DNA. And it’s not ...
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Fecal transplant industry needs a lot of ‘quality’ poop. Where does it come from?

Cody Cottier | Discover | 
To reset the microbiome, the best medicine comes from the last place you’d expect: a fecal transplant, in which a ...
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98.5% of our DNA is ‘junk’: But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play a key role in disease, evolution

Daniel Blanco | Discover | 
Would you purchase a book with over 98 percent of the text written in gibberish? Biology has no business in ...
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9 popular ‘eco-friendly’ everyday things that really aren’t…including buying non-GMO foods

Anna Groves | Discover | 
We all care about the environment at least a tiny bit. Some of us more than others. But there are ...
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Life after death? Some genes turn on after we die, and we don’t know why

Kate Golembiewski | Discover | 
“We really know nothing about what happens when you die,” says Peter Noble, a former professor at the University of ...
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If you can’t remember your dreams, is there something wrong with you?

Megan Schmidt | Discover | 
What is it about people who don’t remember their dreams that sets them apart from the people that do? Is ...
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Viewpoint: We should be skeptical of memory boosting promises by wearable brain stimulators like ‘Humm’

Neuroskeptic | Discover | 
I came across a brain stimulation device called Humm that promises to improve your cognitive function and memory if you ...
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How genes from long-extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans live on in modern human DNA

Nathaniel Scharping | Discover | 
When the Neanderthal genome was first sequenced in 2010 and compared with ours, scientists noticed that genes from Homo neanderthalensis ...
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Fasting as a treatment for Alzheimer’s? Preliminary research indicates benefits

Amber Jorgenson | Discover | 
[Neuroscientist Mark] Mattson has spent decades researching calorie intake and Alzheimer’s disease. In several studies of mice genetically altered to ...
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Microsleep: What happens to our brains when we’re both awake and asleep?

Megan Schmidt | Discover | 
During microsleep, parts of the brain go offline for a few seconds while the rest of the brain stays awake ...
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Is childhood trauma linked to depression? Why this paper may have overestimated the impact

Neuroskeptic | Discover | 
A paper in PNAS got some attention on Twitter recently. It’s called Childhood trauma history is linked to abnormal brain connectivity ...
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Will ‘common sense” keep us from making human clones?

Karen Weintraub | Discover | 
Prominent scientists involved in cloning say they’ve never had any intention of replicating a person — and are as wary ...
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Can genetic matchmaking help us find a healthier true love?

Eric Betz | Discover | 
Ever since his work on [the Human Genome Project, geneticist George Church has] been trying to sequence the rest of ...
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Were the Denisovans a collection of 3 different species?

Nathaniel Scharping | Discover | 
A new study using genetic data is offering an intriguing new look into the history of the Denisovans, revealing them as a ...
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Human brains have been shrinking since the Stone Age. We don’t know why

Bridget Alex | Discover | 
It’s something of a well-known secret among anthropologists: Based on measurements of skulls, the average brain volume of Homo sapiens ...
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Domestication ‘reboot’: CRISPR gene editing turns wild plants into desirable fruits and vegetables

Jonathon Keats | Discover | 
Early in the 20th century, a strange tomato plant took root in the northeastern United States. Because of a random ...
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How the evolution of our ability to run marathons ‘made us human’

Bridget Alex | Discover | 
Let’s call it the “running made us human” hypothesis: According to some scientists, distance running was key to our ancestors’ ...
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Atheists are mutants? Dissecting a ‘genetics’ paper without genetics

Neuroskeptic | Discover | 
I just came across a paper with an interesting title: The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”. The ...
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Evolutionary riddle: Why humans have breasts?

Bridget Alex | Discover | 
Over the years, researchers have proposed a number of explanations for human breasts. Some claimed evolution favored “pendulous” breasts — as scientists ...
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Using personality types to predict cancer? Why was this 30-year-old case of ‘probable scientific fraud’ never investigated?

Neuroskeptic | Discover | 
The Journal of Health Psychology has just published an extraordinary pair of papers that call for a new inquiry into a 30-year ...
2-26-2019 neanderthal dna still runs in our genomes complicating the story of our origins

Were Neanderthals doomed by their inbreeding?

Bridget Alex | Discover | 
Mounting evidence suggests Neanderthals also had a habit of inbreeding, or conceiving with close relatives. Several studies have now reported ...
2-20-2019 the rise of the rat cyborgs forecasts the glorious merger of biology and ai

‘Human-controlled rat cyborgs’ are real

Bill Andrews | Discover | 
Scientists have created human-controlled rat cyborgs. Lest you think this is some media sensationalism at work, here’s the actual title ...
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Ancient African DNA reveals insights before slavery, colonialism

Bridget Alex, Elizabeth Sawchuk | Discover | 
[B]ones between 5,000 and 15,000 years old — surrounding the start of the Holocene, our current geologic epoch — can ...
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Learn while sleeping? Listening to foreign words could ‘enhance’ language abilities

Megan Schmidt | Discover | 
[L]istening to French on tape while you sleep is unlikely to instantly give you the ability to order a vanilla ...
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Why does human skin color have so much variation?

Bridget Alex | Discover | 
Human skin color reflects an evolutionary balancing act tens of thousands of years in the making. There’s a convincing explanation ...
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