A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reveals that Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in northern Israel—butchered their food in noticeably different ways. Despite using the same tools and hunting the same prey, groups in Amud and Kebara caves left behind distinct patterns of cut-marks on animal bones, suggesting that food preparation techniques may have been culturally specific and passed down through generations. These differences cannot be explained by tool type, skill, or available resources, and may reflect practices such as drying or aging meat before butchering. The findings provide rare insight into the social and cultural complexity of Neanderthal communities.

Foundation models in molecular biology, leveraging their success in NLP and image generation, are revolutionizing the understanding of multi-level molecular correlations by training on vast datasets encompassing RNA/DNA/protein sequences, single-cell transcriptomics, and spatial transcriptomics. These models decode intricate relationships (e.g., gene regulatory networks, protein interaction hubs) to predict functions, design therapeutics, and infer spatial tissue dynamics. Current frameworks include ESM-2 (protein structure-function prediction), scGPT (single-cell data integration), and DNABERT (genomic variant interpretation). Future directions emphasize multimodal integration (combining sequences, structures, and omics), interpretable attention mechanisms for biological insights, and scalable architectures for high-resolution spatial-temporal data. Addressing data heterogeneity and model generalizability will unlock precision biomedicine applications.

Kyoto, Japan -- Many people tend to trust dogs' instincts regarding humans. If dogs gravitate towards you, dog lovers will likely see you as safe and trustworthy, but if dogs are apprehensive around you, some may begin to question your character. Yet how and even if dogs socially evaluate people remains a mystery.

Studies have demonstrated that cognitively complex and social animal species -- such as chimpanzees -- can form reputations of humans either through direct interaction or by observing third-party interactions. The historically intimate relationship dogs have with humans has also made them the focus of considerable research, but findings have proven inconsistent.

Previous research conducted at the Wolf Science Center in Austria found that pack-living dogs and wolves did not form reputations of individual humans after both direct and indirect experience with them. This nonjudgmental attitude may be due to the animals' limited experience interacting with humans, so further study required the participation of more experienced dogs.

Experiment shows freshwater fish like complicated shoreline environments, just as saltwater species do