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The 1000-year-old brain of an individual excavated from a churchyard in Ypres, Belgium. The folds of the tissue, which are still soft and wet, are stained orange with iron oxides.How does 3D-printed wood compare to the real thing? Do long genes age faster than short ones? And why did scientists teach a robot how to do parkour? Check out the answers below in some of our favorite selections from, building your home out of sticks is a recipe for disaster.
Traditional methods of wood shaping are subtractive and tend to produce large amounts of waste, which is usually discarded or recycled into materials like fuel, mulch, and animal bedding. In a study published last week in—including a collection of miniature tables and chairs. The resulting constructions, the study authors report, looked, felt, and smelled just like the genuine article—and even had the durability of natural wood.
Even by the human body’s soft tissue standards, the brain is a delicate organ. It often decays and liquefies shortly after death. Well-preserved brain tissue has been recorded under some well-studied circumstances: mummification, freezing in permafrost, being tanned and preserved by acidic peat bogs. But most have assumed these circumstances were relatively rare in the archaeological record.
Forensic anthropologist and former undertaker Alexandra Morton-Hayward used to think so, too. But in a study published this week in the—up to 12,000 years in one case. Why do some brains survive whereas other turn to mush? “Just as we’re all different in life, we all decompose differently in death,” Morton-Hayward says. “A lot seems to depend on how you lived and what you die from.”When the human body grows old, it undergoes a series of profound transformations.
Scientists generally believe that, as we are exposed to ultraviolet radiation, harmful molecules, and other forms of wear and tear, the DNA within our cells gradually accumulates damage. But although many studies have attempted to determine which areas of the genome are involved in accelerating aging—and pinpoint those that may slow it down—researchers have yet to uncover a clear pattern in what the proteins that genes associated with aging actually do..
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