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Dramatic stone masks, iconic finds in the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan, were supposed to be made from a jadelike stone. Many researchers also thought the large faces were made on the site of the pre-Columbian metropolis. Instead, they seem to have been made in workshops a great distance to the south of the city. And they are made of softer stone like serpentinite and polished with quartz. Quartz does not appear around Teotihuacan, bolstering the notion that the masks were made far away....

For the first million years of their existence, the early members of our genus, Homo, shared the African landscape with another group of hominids, the robust australopithecines. Although the two groups were closely related, there were striking differences between them. Perhaps most notably, the robusts had giant molars, thick tooth enamel and a bony crest atop the skull that anchored huge chewing muscles. Paleoanthropologists have long believed that the robusts used their elaborate headgear to process tough plant foods....

In my work as a paleontologist, I seek to understand the lives of extinct animals—how they moved, what they ate, the sounds they might have made. I also serve as an animation and creature-design consultant for exhibits, television, movies and games. Among the most common topics I have been asked to tackle for these projects are those pertaining to animal sounds. Whether someone is reconstructing long-vanished pterosaurs for an academic study or designing a creature for a blockbuster film, sound is paramount in bringing both past and imaginary worlds to life....

Lemonick, an editor at Scientific American, delivers a finely observed profile of Lonni Sue Johnson, an artist and musician who developed a rare viral infection of the brain that destroyed much of her capacity to recall the past and form new memories. Amazingly, the virus left many other parts of her cognition intact, including her speech, exuberant personality, and ability to write, draw and play the viola. Because she was more accomplished before her illness than any other amnesiac previously studied, Johnson has offered scientists an unparalleled opportunity to learn how memories are made, stored and retrieved—for instance, after becoming sick, she failed to recognize many well-known works of art but recalled in perfect detail how to paint a watercolor and describe her technique....

When inventor Charles Fritts created the first crude solar photovoltaic cells in the 1880s, one might have thought the achievement would rapidly revolutionize global electricity production. There is, after all, no power source cheaper, cleaner and more ubiquitous than sunlight. Yet despite enormous (and ongoing) technical advances making solar power ever more capable and affordable, some 140 years on it still supplies less than 5 percent of the world’s electricity. For all its benefits, solar power does have drawbacks that can limit its use—chief among them the fact that half the planet’s surface is in darkness at any given time....

Fresh from attending President Barack Obama’s announcement of the BRAIN Initiative at the White House on April 2nd, Society for Neuroscience president Larry Swanson, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California, composed this letter to SFN’s nearly 42,000 members. In the 5 April missive, Swanson, writing on behalf of SFN’s executive committee, calls the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative “tremendously positive” for neuroscience. Its aim is to let scientists examine and record the activity of millions of neurons at they function at the speed of thought; ultimately, applications to several human diseases are hoped for....

By Tim Ghianni(Reuters) - Kentucky is offering a $7,200 reward to anyone who can lead authorities to the person or people responsible for shooting two endangered whooping cranes that arrived in the state this winter.The two 5-foot (1.5-meter) tall, pure white birds, who were mates, were killed around Thanksgiving in central Kentucky, according to U.S. officials. The shooters could face up to a $100,000 fine and a year in jail.Fewer than 500 whooping cranes live in the wild in the United States, making them the world’s most endangered crane species, said Tom MacKenzie a spokesman for the U....

In his book Phi, neuroscientist Tononi imagines Galileo Galilei, the 16th-century astronomer, drifting into a dream that takes him on a journey to understand consciousness. Part fantasy novel, part scientific expedition, Phi follows Galileo as he puzzles over what consciousness is, where it comes from and what beings can possess it. Tononi invokes Dante’s Divine Comedy by having guides, all groundbreaking scientists, introduce Galileo to different facets of consciousness. The first guide is the sharp-tongued biologist Francis Crick, who reveals the parts of the brain that contribute to consciousness....

Scientists have lately made remarkable discoveries about our physical and mental well-being—and things that threaten it. In the article leading this section, a pair of Nobel Prize winners explain an amazing brain system that functions like a GPS, tracking us from point to point on a mental grid. Another article follows disease detectives in early 2016 as they figured out that the recent explosion in Zika virus infections was not caused by genetic changes, as some feared; rather human activity is very likely at fault....

In the 1950s scientists studied the effects of so-called psychedelics: psilocybin from mushrooms, mescaline from cacti and the synthetic lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. British psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the name for this class of drugs based on their mind-altering properties, such as changes in the sense of self. The drugs showed some initial promise in treating chronic pain and depression in terminally ill patients but a wave of recreational abuse in the late 1960s led to outlawing and a halt in research....

Allergies can cause some would-be cat lovers to avoid having feline friends. Now researchers have engineered a protein that could be used as a treatment to block cat allergies. During an allergic reaction, an antibody known as IgE binds to the surface of immune cells and causes the release of histamine. In previous studies, Andrew Saxon of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine and his colleagues demonstrated that a protein containing two fragments that bind to receptors on immune cells can inhibit allergic inflammation in mice....

[Editor’s note: This article was updated on October 20th at 5:30pm to clarify a Senate provision for regulating high-priority chemicals.] There are tens of thousands of chemicals in our furniture, our vehicles and our clothes, along with other objects we rely on—many of which are helpful, but some might harm people. Yet over the past 40 years the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has banned or curtailed fewer than a dozen chemical families, and reviewed the safety of only a couple of hundred substances....

Trick and treat: Workers divulge computer passwords for the promise of candy Worried about someone stealing your identity? Hopefully you’re more careful than our friends across the pond. Organizers of the Infosecurity Europe computer security trade show were alarmed to discover this week that 121 of 576 subway riders (21 percent) at London’s Liverpool Street Station were prepared to reveal their computer passwords in return for a chocolate bar. The only comforting thing about the survey is that more people kept their mouths shut this time than they did last year when 64 percent of those polled were willing to part with their secret code in return for chocolate....

WASHINGTON—Dr. Francis Collins is being held over as the director of the National Institutes of Health by the Trump administration, his office announced Thursday afternoon. Collins had been prepared to step down from the post on Friday, after Trump’s inauguration, and return to his lab at the NIH Bethesda campus. However, with Thursday’s news, he will remain as director for the time being. It is not yet known whether Trump will permanently reappoint Collins to be his NIH director for his full term....

American households annually spend more money on health care than on education and entertainment combined, with more than $200 billion alone going toward the purchase of prescription drugs, according to The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care research and communication group. As health costs and unemployment soar (an estimated 45 million people in the U.S., including eight million children, do not have health insurance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau), it has become ever tougher for people to afford medical treatment, forcing some to not to fill prescriptions or to skip doses, thereby reducing therapeutic benefits as well as upping the opportunity for antibiotic resistance, according to Kaiser....

Editor’s Note: This story was originally printed in the December 2005 issue of Scientific American magazine. Despite long-standing public concern about the safety of nuclear energy, more and more people are realizing that it may be the most environmentally friendly way to generate large amounts of electricity. Several nations, including Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam, are building or planning nuclear plants. But this global trend has not as yet extended to the U....

Sleep aids memory. Whether tested in animals or humans, studies have shown that sense memories–such as learning a certain sequence of dance steps–take root more solidly when paired with adequate rest. Now new research shows that so-called declarative memories–such as a sequence of facts–also benefit from slumber, especially when subjects are challenged with subsequent, competing information. Jeffrey Ellenbogen of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues recruited 60 healthy subjects–excluding night owls, the restless and the lethargic–and asked them to memorize 20 pairs of random words, such as blanket and village....

In 1990 Congress and President George H. W. Bush proclaimed the beginning of the “Decade of the Brain,” intended “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research.” Improvements in imaging technologies were giving us better ways to peer at the workings of the inner universe inside our noggins. Researchers used the imaging to further probe correlations between types of thinking and increased blood flow or neural electrical activity, indirect indicators of areas of the brain at work....

When the world changes unpredictably over the course of centuries, no one is shocked: Who blames the Roman centurions for not foreseeing the invention of rocket launchers? Yet monumental and surprising transformations occur on much shorter timescales, too. Even in the early 1980s you would have been hard-pressed to find people confidently predicting the rise of the Internet or the fall of the U.S.S.R. Unexpected change bedevils the business community endlessly, despite all best efforts to anticipate and adapt to it–witness the frequent failure of companies’ five-year plans....

For most of recorded history, no one accepted the existence atoms, even though Democritus, Lucretius and other ancient philosophers described them. Aristotle claimed matter was infinitely divisible and his view dominated for 2,000 years. Imagine you lived 1,000 years ago. What evidence could you provide to attest to the existence of atoms? How could you combine simple observations and mathematical thinking to resolve the question, without any modern equipment? Notes:...