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Content: Volume 5, Issue 4

showing 11-15 of 29 breaks

High in the Pamir Mountains: Ancient Cannabis Smoking in Western China

Cannabis is one of the most contentious and widely used drug plants in the world today. However, its history of use and the role that it played among peoples in the past is poorly understood. Historians and archaeologists have debated about ancient drug use for... click to read more

  • Robert N. Spengler III | Laboratory Director at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Department of Archaeology, Jena, Germany
Views 9371
Reading time 4 min
published on Nov 27, 2019
Silver-screen or starving? Predicting success in showbiz

In 1905 Albert Einstein had his "annus mirabilis", giving him an unassailable status as a genius in modern culture. Was this year a miraculous coincidence, or on the other hand could this have been predicted? Recent research suggests that perhaps unexpectedly, the answer is no.... click to read more

  • Oliver E. Williams | PhD student at School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  • Lucas Lacasa | Reader at School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
Views 5482
Reading time 3.5 min
published on Nov 25, 2019
Long-dead dinosaurs support new life

Modern scientific equipment has revolutionized the study of hidden life. Advances in genetic sequencing allow us to discover mysterious worlds of diverse microbes in Earth's harshest environments or within our bodies. Life also hides from us through time. Studying long-extinct creatures can be challenging. We must... click to read more

  • Evan T. Saitta | Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA
Views 6918
Reading time 3 min
published on Nov 20, 2019
Gotta recognize ‘em all! Using Pokémon to understand brain development

Despite the differences that distinguish humans from one another, our brains are astonishingly similar to one another. Why are brains organized so identically to one another? This resemblance is especially striking in a region called the "temporal lobe". In this part of the brain, there... click to read more

  • Jesse Gomez | Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Neurosciences Program, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA; Psychology Department, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
Views 5296
Reading time 3.5 min
published on Nov 19, 2019
A tiny shark from the ancient past of the United States

Sixty-eight million years ago, a Tyrannosaurus rex died in a small river in what is now South Dakota, USA. Along with "Sue", the T. rex's skeleton, many other animals had pieces of their skeleton preserved in the same section of the river. The most recently... click to read more

  • Terry A. Gates | Assistant Professor at Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Views 6727
Reading time 4 min
published on Nov 15, 2019