Humans

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
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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?
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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

Nicolle R. Fuller/Science Photo Library

THE theory of evolution is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human intellect. Some might argue that it is the greatest, although quantum theory or relativity would have their supporters too. But in the biological sciences, it stands unrivalled. It is no less than the grand unified theory of life.
It is also a theory in the truest sense of the word: an interlocking and consistent system of empirical observations and testable hypotheses that has never failed scrutiny. Nothing has even been discovered that falsifies any part of it, despite strenuous efforts by detractors. … More

Netflix’s Hope Frozen documentary follows a family in Thailand that cryogenically freezes their 2-year-old daughter’s brain after she dies, creating a controversy-fuelled media storm

Humans 23 September 2020
By Simon Ings
Einz’s mother remembering her 2-year-old daughter
Netfilx

Hope Frozen: A quest to live twice
Pailin Wedel
Netflix
THE world – including this magazine – hasn’t shied away from expressing opinions about the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the US non-profit founded by Fred and Linda Chamberlain in 1972 to freeze corpses and body parts in the hope of one day resurrecting the dead.
Most observers are content with interrogating Alcor’s bizarre mission by asking if technologies for resurrection will ever be viable. This, of course, is a non-question: who knows what is around the corner? The successful freezing and thawing of a … More