• Dear olivier hartmanshenn,

    Here is your customized Science X Newsletter for week 08:

    The evolving pigment palette of European skin, eyes and hair as seen through ancient DNA

    University of Ferrara researchers in Italy have examined how European skin, eye and hair pigmentation evolved over the past 45,000 years. Findings indicate that lighter pigmentation traits emerged gradually and non-linearly, with dark skin persisting in many populations well into the Copper and Iron Ages. The study used a probabilistic genotype likelihood method to infer pigmentation traits from low-coverage ancient DNA.

    Viking skulls inspected with CT scans reveal severe morbidity

    Sweden's Viking Age population appears to have suffered from severe oral and maxillofacial disease, sinus and ear infections, osteoarthritis, and much more. This is shown in a study from the University of Gothenburg in which Viking skulls were examined using modern X-ray techniques.

    Rare rearing: Japanese collaboration to save near-extinct White-bellied herons in Bhutan takes wings

    The White-bellied Heron (WBH), the world's second-largest heron, is a symbolic bird for the people of Bhutan and also a typical "umbrella species" that requires a habitat with a vast, preserved environment. In recent years, the WBH's habitat has been severely disturbed by human activities, and its population has decreased significantly.

    Researchers spin 'wheel of fortune' to find a fundamental proof of quantum mechanics

    Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney have proven that a spinning atomic nucleus really is fundamentally a quantum resource. The teams were led respectively by Professor Valerio Scarani, from NUS Department of Physics, and Scientia Professor Andrea Morello from UNSW Engineering. The paper was published in the journal Newton on 14 February 2025.

    Reintroducing wolves to Scottish Highlands could help address climate emergency, study suggests

    Reintroducing wolves to the Scottish Highlands could lead to an expansion of native woodland which could take in and store one million metric tons of CO2 annually, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Leeds.

    Ancient seafarers in Southeast Asia may have built advanced boats 40,000 years ago

    The ancient peoples of the Philippines and of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) may have built sophisticated boats and mastered seafaring tens of thousands of years ago—millennia before Magellan, Zheng He, and even the Polynesians.

    'City killer' asteroid now has 3.1% chance of hitting Earth: NASA

    An asteroid that could level a city now has a 3.1-percent chance of striking Earth in 2032, according to NASA data released Tuesday—making it the most threatening space rock ever recorded by modern forecasting.

    Scientists discover unexpected decline in global ocean evaporation amid rising sea temperatures

    A study published in Geophysical Research Letters has challenged the conventional understanding of the relationship between global warming and ocean evaporation. A research team from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered a phenomenon that, despite rising sea surface temperatures, global ocean evaporation has decreased over the past decade.

    The inner ear of Neanderthals reveals clues about their enigmatic origin

    New research on the inner ear morphology of Neanderthals and their ancestors challenges the widely accepted theory that Neanderthals originated after an evolutionary event that implied the loss of part of their genetic diversity. The findings, based on fossil samples from Atapuerca (Spain) and Krapina (Croatia), as well as from various European and Western Asian sites have been published in Nature Communications.

    A century of extra carbon dioxide boosts photosynthesis in tropical trees

    The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising rapidly, with numerous negative consequences for the climate. However, there is also a positive effect, as scientists from WUR have discovered: for the past century, the extra CO2 has led to more efficient photosynthesis in tropical trees.

    Burning plastic for cooking and heating: An emerging environmental crisis

    A Curtin University-led paper, "The Use of Plastic as a Household Fuel among the Urban Poor in the Global South" published in Nature Cities, has called for action to reduce the burning of plastics for heating and cooking, a common yet hazardous practice emerging in millions of households in developing nations due to a lack of traditional energy sources.

    'Dictator Game' experiments show women are more generous than men

    A group of psychologists and economists at Jaume I University, in Spain, has found evidence that women are more generous than men. In their study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Iván Barreda-Tarrazona, Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez, Marina Pavan, and Gerardo Sabater-Grande conducted experiments with volunteers playing "the Dictator Game."

    Microsoft joins quantum race with breakthrough chip

    Tech giant Microsoft unveiled a new computer chip on Wednesday that it says could transform everything from fighting pollution to developing new medicines, joining Google and IBM in arguing that the promise of quantum computing is closer to reality.

    Cosmic radiation from supernova altered virus evolution in Africa, study suggests

    Isolated by mountains along the East African Rift is Lake Tanganyika. More than 400 miles long, it is the continent's deepest lake and accounts for 16% of the world's available freshwater. Between 2 and 3 million years ago, the number of virus species infecting fish in that immense lake exploded, and in a new study, UC Santa Cruz researchers propose that this explosion was perhaps triggered by the explosion of a distant star.

    Elon Musk calls for deorbit of International Space Station as soon as possible

    Elon Musk's latest space-related hammer throw is to call for it to be deorbited as soon as two years from now.

    Jupiter's moon Callisto is very likely an ocean world

    More pocked with craters than any other object in our solar system, Jupiter's outermost and second-biggest Galilean moon, Callisto, appears geologically unremarkable. In the 1990s, however, NASA's Galileo spacecraft captured magnetic measurements near Callisto that suggested that its ice shell surface—much like that of Europa, another moon of Jupiter—may encase a salty, liquid water ocean.

    Topological quantum processor uses Majorana zero modes for fault-tolerant computing

    In a leap forward for quantum computing, a Microsoft team led by UC Santa Barbara physicists on Wednesday unveiled an eight-qubit topological quantum processor, the first of its kind. The chip, built as a proof-of-concept for the scientists' design, opens the door to the development of the long-awaited topological quantum computer.

    How dinosaur extinctions created an environment that contributed to our fruit-eating primate ancestors

    The extinction of the largest dinosaurs to walk the Earth may have played a critical role in creating an environment that helped fruits evolve, thereby indirectly shaping the evolution of our own fruit-eating ancestors, according to new research.

    Unexpected shape of lead-208 nucleus prompts reevaluation of atomic nuclei models

    An international research collaboration led by the University of Surrey's Nuclear Physics Group has overturned the long-standing belief that the atomic nucleus of lead-208 (²⁰⁸Pb) is perfectly spherical. The discovery challenges fundamental assumptions about nuclear structure and has far-reaching implications for our understanding of how the heaviest elements are formed in the universe.

    Nuclear fusion: WEST machine beats the world record for plasma duration

    1,337 seconds: that was how long WEST, a tokamak run from the CEA Cadarache site in southern France and one of the EUROfusion consortium medium size Tokamak facilities, was able to maintain a plasma for on 12 February. This was a 25% improvement on the previous record time achieved with EAST, in China, a few weeks previously.

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