Humans

Researchers have discovered that mutation of a neuronal gene can have a positive effect: higher IQ in humans.When genes mutate, it can result in severe diseases of the human nervous system. Neuroscientists at Leipzig University and the University of Würzburg have now used fruit flies to demonstrate how, apart from the negative effect, the mutation of a neuronal gene can have a positive effect – namely higher IQ in humans. They have published their findings in the prestigious journal Brain.Synapses are the contact points…

More than a million Americans have died of Covid-19, and the World Health Organization estimated this Thursday that the global death toll is around 15 million — a horrifying, and largely unnecessary, tragedy. But for all that the world has lost in the last few years, the history of infectious disease has a grim message: It could have been even worse. That appalling death toll resulted even though the coronavirus kills only about 0.7 percent of the people it infects. Imagine instead that it killed 30 percent — and that…

Researchers have discovered a shift in canine coronavirus that points to a possible pattern of change found in other coronaviruses and may provide clues to how they spread from animals to humans.Cornell scientists have identified a shift that occurs in canine coronavirus that points to a possible pattern of change found in other coronaviruses and which may provide clues to how they transmit to humans from animals.A new canine coronavirus was first identified in two Malaysian human patients who developed pneumonia in…

Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a 2021 study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens and their ancestors ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain.  It's not quite the balanced diet of berries, grains, and steak we might picture when we think of 'paleo' food. But according to anthropologists from Israel's Tel Aviv University and the University of Minho in Portugal, modern hunter-gatherers have given…

Rats have been seen as filthy disease-spreaders since at least the time of the plague, but new research shows that rodents and other city-dwelling animals are less likely to cause the next pandemic than previously thought.  ​Researchers at Georgetown University in Washington DC studied data on about nearly 3,000 mammals, expecting to find that those living in urban environments hosted more viruses that could be caught by humans, because they were in such close contact.​They found that urban animals did in fact carry 10…

Credit: Chris Hunkeler from Carlsbad, California, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 A new Rice University-led analysis of the remains of ancient predators reveals new information about how prehistoric humans did—or didn't—find their food. …

A Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS), a payload on-board Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, has detected solar proton events which significantly increase the radiation exposure to humans in space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has said.The instrument on January 18 also recorded coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a powerful stream of ionised material and magnetic fields, which reach the Earth a few days later, leading to geomagnetic storms and lighting up the polar sky with auroras, the ISRO said on Wednesday."Such…

Microsoft Corp's LinkedIn boosted subscription revenue by 8 percent after arming its sales team with artificial intelligence software that not only predicts clients at risk of canceling, but also explains how it arrived at its conclusion.The system, introduced last July and to be described in a LinkedIn blog post on Wednesday, marks a breakthrough in getting AI to "show its work" in a helpful way.While AI scientists have no problem designing systems that make accurate predictions on all sorts of business outcomes, they…