Long before human ancestors began hunting large mammals for meat, a fatty diet provided them with the nutrition to develop bigger brains, according to a paper in Current Anthropology.

The paper argues that our early ancestors acquired a taste for fat by eating marrow scavenged from the skeletal remains of large animals that had been killed and eaten by other predators. The argument challenges the widely held view among anthropologists that eating meat was the critical factor in setting the stage for the evolution of humans. This is anthropology, so they may be making a distinction without a difference; in a calorie-poor landscape all was eaten.

I am very happy to report today that the CMS experiment just confirmed to be an excellent spectrometer - as good as they get, I would say - by discovering two new excited B hadrons. The field of heavy meson spectroscopy proves once again to be rich with new gems ready to be unearthed, as we collect more data and dig deeper. For such discoveries to be made, collecting as many proton-proton collisions as possible is in fact the decisive factor, along with following up good ideas and preserving our will to not leave any stone unturned.

We recently conducted one of the largest-ever studies on perfectionism. We learned that perfectionism has increased substantially over the past 25 years and that it affects men and women equally.

We also learned that perfectionists become more neurotic and less conscientious as time passes.

Perfectionism involves striving for flawlessness and requiring perfection of oneself and others. Extremely negative reactions to mistakes, harsh self-criticism, nagging doubt about performance abilities and a strong sense that others are critical and demanding also define the trait.

A team of scholars has found that magnetic waves in the Sun’s corona, its outermost layer of atmosphere, react to sound waves escaping from the inside of the Sun.

Alfvénic waves are in plasma and have been found to play a crucial role in transporting energy around the Sun and the solar system. They were previously thought to originate at the Sun’s surface, where boiling hydrogen reaches temperatures of 6,000 degrees and churns the Sun’s magnetic field. However, researchers have found evidence that the magnetic waves also react – or are excited – higher in the atmosphere by sound waves leaking out from the inside of the Sun and the sound waves leave a distinctive marker on the magnetic waves.

In 2011 I wrote a book with Dr. Alex Berezow of RealClearScience in which we noted the common cause among the anti-vaccine, anti-energy, and anti-GMO communities. They shared common beliefs about distrust of science and I made a challenge; I said if I drew a radius around a Whole Foods, I could predict with high accuracy how those people with those beliefs voted.

Bees have tiny brains but that is all relative; It seems they also possess complex number skills.

Lots of animals count as shown by how many engage in foraging, shoaling, and resource management arithmetic, addition and subtraction, is rare, only a few nonhuman vertebrates do it.

Senckenberg scientist Ingmar Werneburg, together with an international team, re-examined the An examination of the skull structure of Tyrannosaurus rex using “anatomical network analysis” found that the carnivorous dinosaur had an extremely flexible skull structure.

Tyrannosaurus rex – the “King of the Tyrant Lizards” – owes its name in part to its impressive teeth and skull. Researchers compared the skull of T. rex with the skull construction of modern terrestrial vertebrates  to examine which skull bones are connected to each other and found that different bone modules led to a highly flexible muzzle that aided in tearing apart prey animals. 

In January, the Chang’e-4 lunar probe landed on dark side of the Moon but it's a tiny relay satellite that is getting all of the buzz today. 

"Bud Light", a lower carbohydrate beer produced by  Anheuser–Busch InBev of Belgium, made waves at the Super Bowl, among beer experts and competitors at least, by assuring their customers they did not use corn syrup.

So corn syrup is bad? Well, no, they didn't say that, they just said they didn't have it, but such "nocebo" tactics - the opposite of placebo, making people feel healthier about a product they don't have - have been tried and true for 50 years.(1) 

I got a butter shaper for Christmas. I asked for one because I make lot of butter in a mason jar and then just throw it in tupperware but my friends sometimes want butter and it feels a little dismissive to just hand them tupperware.

Imagine my disappointment when I read the instructions which stated that it needed to be treated with "Organic Coconut Oil." Butter used to be something almost everyone made and now it was the providence of uninformed hippies, it seems. Or maybe this company was trapped in 2016?