News Articles

A face, a remarkably complete lower jaw, and part of a second lower jaw are exciting new fossils discovered east of Lake Turkana which confirm that there were two additional species of our genus living alongside our direct human ancestral species, Homo erectus, almost two million years ago.The finds were uncovered between 2007 and 2009 by the Koobi Fora Research Project (KFRP), led by Meave and Louise Leakey. 

Husbands and wives express love differently in marriage, according to a new study. Looking at survey results collected at four time points over 13 years of marriage, researchers ("Do Men and Women Show Love Differently in Marriage?" Schoenfeld et al., Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, November 2012) found that while both genders were equally likely to show love through affection, wives expressed love by being less antagonistic while husbands showed love by initiating sex or sharing activities together. 

The earthquake that shook Sumatra on on April 11, 2012 is distinct, not just because it was  magnitude-8.6 but also because it was both larger than scientists thought an earthquake of its type could ever be and it was rupturing along multiple faults that lie at nearly right angles to one another.Like an underwater earthquake in a maze. 

A little nuclear robot on Mars is getting all of the attention this week but Earth has plenty of undiscovered life - a third of Earth's organisms live in our planet's rocks and sediments and they are almost a complete mystery.

Abbott today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Omnilink Elite® Vascular Balloon-Expandable Stent System for the treatment of iliac artery disease, a form of peripheral artery disease (PAD) that affects the lower extremities. Iliac artery disease can progress to where patients experience chronic pain and reduced ability to walk, potentially leading to permanent disability.

Climate change advocacy groups are not happy with U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern's recent statement at Dartmouth College renouncing a limit of 2 degree celsius (2C) temperature rise as a global goal for UN climate negotiations. Stern said that agreeing to a framework to achieve the 2C goal would "only lead to deadlock" and that a new agreement should give countries "flexibility." 

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Gibson Guitar Corp. entered into a criminal enforcement agreement resolving a criminal investigation into allegations that the company violated the Lacey Act by illegally purchasing and importing ebony wood from Madagascar and rosewood and ebony from India. 

Pyros small tactical munition completed a successful warhead and guidance system test, according to Raytheon.There are three choices for guiding the weapon to the target: GPS coordinates, inertial navigation or laser designation.   There are also three options for engaging the target: height-of-burst, point-of-impact or fuze-delay detonation. The end-to-end test validated the weapon's guidance modes (semi-active laser and global positioning system), its height-of-burst sensor, electronic safe and arm device, and multi-effects warhead.

Fainting, also called vasovagal syncope (by about five neurologists and no one else), is a brief loss of consciousness that occurs when blood flow to the brain drops.  Its causes are so numerous that it is basically unknown what causes it - everything from dehydration to medications to pregnancy, heart conditions and age - but these triggers all occur among people who have a strong genetic predisposition, according to new research.

Does gaydar exist?  If so, it's in the eyes.Sexual orientation can be revealed by pupil dilation to attractive people, say researchers who used a specialized infrared lens to measure pupillary changes of participants watching erotic videos. Pupils were pretty accurate: they widened most to videos of people who participants found attractive, thereby revealing where they were on the sexual spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual.

Conventional motion capture for film, like Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and game production ("Mass Effect 3") involves multiple cameras and actors festooned with markers but the future of motion capture may look much different.A new technique not only captures the 3D poses of actors, like with traditional motion capture systems, but derives "biped controllers", which are programs that incorporate the underlying physics of the motion. Bipedal controllers generate the poses by computing the forces acting on the body and integrating them over time.

It's American election season and that means it is time for psychologists to introduce racism again - not whether you are racist, but how much.Well, only white people are, said a talk at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association. Even if they do not have any racist thoughts or lock their car door when they see a young, black man on the sidewalk and voted for Obama in 2008, white people still are; and their racial attitudes, both conscious and unconscious, may be a significant factor in this year's U.S. presidential election. A survey says so.