Humans

We can’t extract DNA from some of the most perplexing ancient human fossils. But ancient proteins sometimes survive better, and they are finally starting to give up their secrets

Life 9 September 2020
By Colin Barras

Marina Loeb

IT WAS an astonishing discovery: a chamber deep underground, packed full of ancient human remains. The excavators who uncovered the fossils at South Africa’s Rising Star cave in 2013 described the experience as “breathtaking” and “emotional”. Then they took a proper look at the bones, and exhilaration gave way to bewilderment. This new species of ancient human, which the researchers called Homo naledi, had such an odd combination of primitive and modern features that it was impossible to know how it was related to other ancient humans and, ultimately, to us.
About 20 years ago, it looked like the human evolutionary tree was coming into focus. Then palaeontologists started finding ancient humans, like H. naledi, that are so strange, it is as if they had walked off the pages of a Tolkien fantasy. We can’t expect ancient DNA to help resolve their place in the human family tree because most of these misfit cousins were found in places too warm for genetic material to survive. The trail seemed to have gone cold.
In the past few years, however, we have learned to read the signals in other organic molecules that tend to survive longer than DNA and persist even in warm environments. Researchers have already analysed samples of proteins extracted from ancient bones and teeth to reveal relationships between ancient mammals. Now, some think they could reveal how archaic humans like H. naledi evolved and interacted. “I’m confident that it will be possible to put some of these very unusual hominins on the [family] tree,” says Matthew Collins at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Human hybrids … More

The X Prize Foundation CEO on her unique experience as the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station, and how innovation could help us cope with the covid-19 pandemic

Space 9 September 2020
By Chelsea Whyte

Rocio Montoya

IN 2006, Anousheh Ansari made history in several ways. Joining an international crew of astronauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, she became the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman in space, as well as the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station, where she spent nine days conducting science experiments. Prior to blasting off from our planet, Ansari and her family sponsored the first X Prize competition, which offered a $10 million reward to the first non-governmental organisation to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice in two weeks.
Ansari is now the CEO of the X Prize Foundation, which offers large sums of money as incentives to find solutions for huge global issues. There have been X Prizes offered for engineering efficient vehicles, cleaning up oil spills, landing a rover on the moon, improving adult literacy and designing sensors to monitor health. Now, the X Prize Foundation is turning towards the biggest threats we face today: the loss of biodiversity due to climate change and the creation of treatments and vaccines for covid-19. New Scientist spoke to Ansari about how her experiences in space helped give her the collaborative outlook we need to tackle these challenges together.
Chelsea Whyte: You are best known for being one of the first people to self-fund a trip to space. Were you always interested in space?
Anousheh Ansari: I was fascinated with space and stars. As a young child, when I looked at the night skies, I was just very curious to see what’s out there. I always believed there were aliens out there and … More

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Stephen Hawking: A memoir of friendship and physics describes how Leonard Mlodinow’s collaboration with Hawking on The Grand Design (a follow-up to A Brief History of Time) blossomed into a 15-year friendship with a giant of science.

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Science Disrupt is a podcast about change-makers in science, from entrepreneurs and iconoclasts to smart outsiders. Guests include materials scientist Ainissa … More

Covid-19 is affecting ethnic minorities more severely, but we will never understand why if we don’t collect the right data, says Alisha Dua

Humans | Comment 9 September 2020
By Alisha Dua

Michelle D’Urbano

THERE was the home health aide distraught at having potentially transmitted the coronavirus to her patients. The essential worker, just barely into his 40s, on a ventilator for six weeks. The beloved father’s family whose agony was revealed in every phone call recorded in his medical record.
These are the stories of some of the people with covid-19 whose medical records I reviewed as a research volunteer in New York City. Combined with thousands of other people’s anonymous data, such collections are critical for informing research, clinical care, government policies and funding allocations to tackle the pandemic. … More

Computer game 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel isn’t for the faint-hearted because it means keeping track of all the possible threats to every king that ever existed

Humans 9 September 2020
By Jacob Aron
Seeing all the possible moves isn’t the same as anticipating threats
Thunkspace LLC

5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel
Thunkspace
PC
THERE is a phrase that has entered the political lexicon recently. When a politician does something that looks really incompetent, wannabe analysts will fall over backwards to explain why this is part of a dastardly plan that mere mortals can’t comprehend. “X is playing 5D chess!” they exclaim.
If so, that explains a lot about the state of the world because 5D chess is brain-meltingly hard. I have been playing 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel and … More

By Ian Morse
Foliage colour might help forensic researchers locate decomposing bodies
Evgenii Parilov / Alamy

Plants may be able to help investigators find dead bodies. Botanists believe the sudden flush of nutrients into the soil from decomposition may have an impact on nearby foliage. If scientists can understand those changes – for instance, the effect they have on leaf colour – they may be able to identify where remains are buried simply by studying foliage features in aerial images.
“If we’re able to use the plants as sensors, at least first as indicators or crude indicators, we can identify whether a missing body may … More

Most psychology studies involve people living in Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic societies. But the peculiarities of WEIRD thinking are far from universal

Humans 2 September 2020
By Dan Jones

Rocio Montoya

HOW does the culture we live in influence our psychology, motivation and decision making? Joe Henrich was a cultural anthropologist working in the Amazon when he first tried to find out. He pioneered the use of experimental cooperation games like the prisoner’s dilemma and the ultimatum game outside the lab. Later, he realised that his findings have big implications for psychological research, which tends to focus on students from Western backgrounds. In 2010, he introduced the “WEIRD” concept to describe the unusual psychology of the subjects in the vast majority of these studies. Now professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, he tells New Scientist about the origins of WEIRDness, its impact on history and its role in the modern world.
Dan Jones: When did you realise that you, your colleagues and most of the people you teach are WEIRD?
Joe Henrich: The WEIRD label emerged from a series of lunches I started having around 2006 with two cultural psychologists, Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan. We had noticed that in the behavioural sciences and psychology in particular, about 96 per cent of study participants were from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic societies – and that they were often psychological outliers in comparison with other populations. WEIRD people tend to show greater trust in strangers and fairness towards anonymous others; think more analytically rather than holistically; make more use of intentions in moral judgements; are more concerned with personality, the self and the cultivation of personal attributes; they are more individualistic and less loyal to their group; and they are more likely to judge the behaviour of … More

Real-life accounts of International Space Station crew members Samantha Cristoforetti and Terry Virts capture the extraordinarily ordinary life of an astronaut

Space 2 September 2020
By David Silverberg
Samantha Cristoforetti went from being a fighter pilot to an ISS astronaut
ESA/NASA

FROM experiencing the sublime beauty of the blue planet through the porthole of a spacecraft to worrying about what happens if someone dies onboard, everyone wants to know what it is like to be an astronaut. It is, after all, quite literally like nothing on Earth.
New books by two fighter pilots who set out to discover how much of “the right … More