Nearly two decades after researchers assembled the first genetic blueprint for human life, our understanding of our instruction manual has a dramatic and problematic bias: It’s based primarily on white…
Category: Humans
Why being pregnant and unvaccinated against COVID-19 is a risky combo
Snow covered the storied field of Fenway Park in Boston when Kate Yohay, in the second trimester of her pregnancy, arrived. The ballpark had become a COVID-19 vaccination site, and…
Medical crowdfunding rarely helps those who need it most
Online crowdfunding for medical expenses raises less money than social media posts suggest and deepens health care inequities, a new study reports. The first large-scale assessment of medical crowdfunding in…
A deadly bacteria has been infecting children for more than 1,400 years
The tragic death of a 6-year-old boy in early medieval England has given scientists the earliest direct clue to the history of the pathogen Haemophilus influenzae type b. Dated to…
Genetically engineered immune cells have kept two people cancer-free for a decade
In 2010, two blood cancer patients received an experimental immunotherapy, and their cancers went into remission. Ten years later, the cancer-fighting immune cells used in the therapy were still around,…
The earliest evidence of tobacco use dates to over 12,000 years ago
Ancient North Americans started using tobacco around 12,500 to 12,000 years ago, roughly 9,000 years before the oldest indications that they smoked the plant in pipes, a new study finds.…
How catching birds bare-handed may hint at Neandertals’ hunting tactics
Juan Negro crouched in the shadows just outside a cave, wearing his headlamp. For a brief moment, he wasn’t an ornithologist at the Spanish National Research Council’s Doñana Biological Station…
50 years ago, X-rays revealed what ancient Egyptians kept under wraps
Probing pharaohs with X-rays — Science News, October 9, 1971 The 29 mummies of pharaohs and queens were examined without disturbing their present positions.… [Researchers using portable X-ray equipment] found…
‘Ghost tracks’ suggest people came to the Americas earlier than once thought
Footprints left behind by prehistoric people may be some of the strongest evidence yet that humans arrived in the Americas earlier than previously thought. Over 60 “ghost tracks” —…
Fossils and ancient DNA paint a vibrant picture of human origins
In The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Charles Darwin hypothesized that our ancestors came from Africa. He pointed out that among all animals, the African apes — gorillas and…
