Humans

By Michael Marshall
Stone blades found in the deepest layer of Qesem cave in Israel
Filipe Natalio

Ancient humans used controlled fire to modify their stone tools at least 300,000 years ago.
Previously, the oldest hard evidence of controlled fire use was from Pinnacle Point in South Africa, 164,000 years ago. “We just doubled it,” says Filipe Natalio of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He and his colleagues studied 300,000-year-old flint tools from Qesem cave in Israel. The cave was occupied between 420,000 and 200,000 years ago, and the people who lived there regularly lit fires … More

By Colin Barras
A woman’s body exhumed from this graveyard in what was once La Isabela, in the Dominican Republic, seems of African origin
Hackenberg-Photo-Cologne / Alamy

A 15th-century skeleton buried at the first European settlement in the Americas probably belonged to an unknown African woman, an analysis of her teeth suggests. The woman died in her mid-20s, within about five years of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas, and decades before the start of the transatlantic slave trade.
“I think it’s possible that she may have been the earliest known individual of African origin to participate in European efforts to establish a settlement in the Americas,” … More

By Jason Arunn Murugesu
The sound of others eating can be annoying
miodrag ignjatovic/Getty Images

People who are annoyed by the sound of chewing are less likely to be vexed if they think it is made by an animal or other non-human source, rather than a person.
“I think most people can relate to having some level of aversion to certain sounds,” says Miren Edelstein at the University of California, but people with severe cases are said to have a condition called misophonia. “Individuals with misophonia experience aversion that is so severe and debilitating that it has a major impact on their well-being … More

There is plenty to worry about right now, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about the reasons for optimism, says comedian and mental health advocate Ruby Wax

Humans 30 September 2020
By Clare Wilson

Rocio Montoya

RUBY WAX is on a serious mission to improve people’s mental health. The American-British TV star, comedian, author and mental health advocate found fame in the 1980s TV sitcom Girls on Top and went on to deploy her comic persona of a brash, overconfident American in multiple comedy interview shows. Yet it is her experience with depression and stress that has shaped much of her more recent career. Her encounter with major depression 15 years ago led her to earn a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at the University of Oxford, an experience she incorporated into a stage show. For this, as well as her writing about depression and mindfulness, she was awarded an OBE, one of the highest civilian honours in the UK.
Wax has also set up community groups where, before lockdown, people could meet up and chat; these have now moved online. In her fifth and latest book, And Now for the Good News… To the future with love, Wax goes on a whirlwind world tour to meet innovators in schools, businesses and communities whose work she believes shows things are looking up.
Clare Wilson: Now seems an odd time for a book about optimism. Why did you write it?
Ruby Wax: We were besieged by bad news, even before covid. We were going on a drip feed, from one disaster to another, and we were getting addicted to it – at least, I was. I couldn’t wait for more bad news, and you could gossip about it. But where you pay your attention defines your reality. Your brain is shaped by what … More

Sony Pictures Animation
Watch
Connected, in cinemas from 9 October, finds the Mitchell family trying to bond one last time, but the electronic devices they brought with them on their road trip have other ideas, in this animated take on the technological singularity.

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A Series of Fortunate Events occupy biologist Sean B. Carroll’s attention as he sets about explaining the role of chance in the evolution of our planet, our environment and us. Life might have turned out differently – but was it always bound to appear?
Listen
The Microscopists gather to discuss their work, their discoveries and their … More

Must-read book The Drone Age by Michael J. Boyle reveals how drone technology is challenging everything we do – and how we think about war and peace

Technology 30 September 2020
By Simon Ings

MACHINES are only as good as the people who use them. They are neutral – just a faster, more efficient way of doing something that we always intended to do. That is the argument wielded by defenders of technology, anyway.
Michael Boyle, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, isn’t buying it. From commerce to warfare, spy craft to disaster relief, our menu of choices “has been altered or … More

By Grace Browne
Can you see inside my heart?
DEEPOL by plainpicture/Plattform

We may be able to tell someone’s heart rate at a glance, which could help us interpret their emotional state.
Alejandro Galvez-Pol at University College London and his colleagues showed 120 volunteers videos of two people positioned side-by-side. The heart rate of one of the individuals was shown on the screen, in the form of a square that changed colour from black to red with every heartbeat.
The participants were then asked to say who they thought the heartbeat belonged to. On average, they guessed correctly 58 per cent of the … More

By Annalee Newitz

Tony Avelar/AP/Shutterstock

OUTSIDE my window, the skies are brown and the sun is a deep reddish-orange. Unfortunately, that isn’t because I’ve moved off-world to a beautiful alien planet orbiting a red dwarf star.
This is simply what “outside” looks like in San Francisco when vast swathes of the western US are on fire. Even the light itself is alarming. Its Mordor-esque gloom makes everything seem like it is the wrong colour. (For a striking image of California’s Bidwell Bar Bridge against the backdrop of the state’s wildfires,  (see “Wildfire nightmare captured in harrowing image of California burning“.) … More