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Quentin, in a shot taken by his brother Owen Owen Reiser Timothy RevellExecutive editor, London “This here would be my older brother Quentin. And last year, he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of early-onset birdwatcher.” This is Owen, talking in Listers: A glimpse into extreme birdwatching –and it may just be my…

Tests of chimps’ intelligence often take place in labs, not in the wild or in sanctuaries like this one PATRICK MEINHARDT/AFP via Getty Images The Arrogant ApeChristine Webb, Abacus, UK; Avery, US IN THE beginning, God made man in his image, granting him dominion over every living thing that moves upon the earth. Most people…

Researchers at Rice University have found that certain atom-thin semiconductors, known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), can physically shift their atomic lattice when exposed to light. This newly observed response offers a controllable way to tune the behavior and properties of these ultrathin materials. The phenomenon appears in a subtype of TMDs called Janus materials,…

The skin and muscle of Yuka’s front left leg are exceptionally well preserved Love Dalen A woolly mammoth that was frozen in the Siberian permafrost for nearly 40,000 years has yielded the world’s oldest RNA. The specimen, found in 2010 and nicknamed Yuka, is regarded as the best-preserved woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) ever found. Yuka…

Astronomers working with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory and the LOFAR radio telescope have obtained clear evidence of a violent burst of material hurled into space by a distant star. The outflow was strong enough that any nearby planet in its path would likely have its atmosphere stripped away. This burst was identified as…

A recently uncovered and unusually intact impact crater is offering scientists new insights into how objects from space have struck Earth throughout its history. Researchers from Shanghai and Guangzhou, China, describe their findings in the journal Matter and Radiation at Extremes (AIP Publishing). They identified the feature as the Jinlin crater, a bowl-shaped structure positioned…

An international team led by Hungarian scholars has successfully confirmed that skeletal remains discovered in Budapest belong to Duke Béla, the Ban of Macsó, who descended from both the Árpád and Rurik dynasties. This finding resolves a long-standing archaeological mystery that has lingered for more than a century. The project was organized by Tamás Hajdu…