Scientists warn that over the next 50 years, global warming caused by the emission of greenhouse gases will accelerate to a pace that is 5,000 times faster than rice has ever had to contend with at any time during its evolutionary history.

By comparing ancient burial practices with genetic information gleaned from the remains, researchers show that it’s not uncommon for people who aren’t related by blood to be treated as members of the same family—which means that ancient DNA doesn’t tell the whole story of how families and societies worked.

New theoretical models, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, connect, for the first time, the magnetism at the surface of long-dead stellar remnants (white dwarfs) with recent evidence of magnetism at the cores of their dying progenitors (red giants). The team, led by astrophysicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), argues that these magnetic fields might originate early in the stars’ lives, and survive their entire evolution, emerging as ‘fossil fields’ at the surfaces of older remnants.  A better understanding of these processes can also help to better understand our own Sun’s future.

A multidisciplinary study conducted by researchers from the Department of Prehistory, Archaeology, Ancient History, Medieval History, and Historiographical Sciences and Techniques at the University of Murcia, together with the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Chemical Institute for Energy and the Environment (IQUEMA) at the University of Córdoba, reveal a unique combination of pigments never before documented in Hispania, with only one known parallel in Ephesus, Turkey

In 1972, a series of solar proton events occurred between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Had they coincided, astronauts would have been exposed to deadly particle radiation with very little warning and no shielding. As we return to the Moon, understanding these volatile events is increasingly urgent. 

Guided by a medieval Japanese poet and tree-ring analysis of buried cypress trees, researchers have achieved world-leading precision in carbon-14 measurements, finding evidence supporting the occurrence of a solar proton event dated to winter 1200 CE–spring 1201 CE. This research helps fill gaps in our knowledge of extreme space weather and its relation to solar cycles. 

Neanderthals hunted European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) in Central Europe though probably not for food. The careful cleaning of carapace elements at Neumark-Nord indicates that shells were reused, perhaps as small containers or scoop-like implements. This is the finding reported by an international research team led by Professor Dr. Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of the Institute for Ancient Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, now published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Access to nutritious food is a fundamental pillar of human success, but such access has been unequal throughout history.  In pre-industrial European societies, meat was a highly sought-after food, and access to it was often related to a higher social status. The ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in human bone collagen can provide data about what a person ate. Nitrogen isotope ratios reflect the amount of meat a person ate, while carbon isotope ratios reveal what proportion of plants a person ate used the C4 carbon fixation photosynthesis pathway, from which one can infer how much low-status millet and variable-status marine foods a person may have consumed. However, comparing isotope ratios across sites is difficult; the use of manure fertilizer, varying climate conditions, and undernourishment can change the context in which raw values are interpreted. Rozenn Colleter, Michael P. Richards, and colleagues work around this constraint by using the interdecile ratio. 

New research pushes the earliest known origins of dice, gambling, and the exploration of randomness back six millennia and into North America.

A two-thousand-year-old papyrus fragment, discovered in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, reveals thirty previously unpublished verses by Empedocles, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BCE. This discovery offers researchers direct access to a body of thought previously known only through quotations from later authors. The very first edition, translation and commentary on these verses are published in the book L'Empédocle du Caire.