This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The Trump administration has shut down more than 100 climate studies The Trump administration has terminated National Science Foundation grants for more than 100 research projects related to climate change, according to an MIT Technology Review analysis of a database that tracks such cuts. The move will cut off what’s likely to amount to tens of millions of dollars for studies that were previously approved and, in most cases, already in the works. Many believe the administration’s broader motivation is to undermine the power of the university system and prevent research findings that cut against its politics. Read the full story. —James Temple This architect wants to build cities out of lava Arnhildur Pálmadóttir is an architect with an extraordinary mission: to harness molten lava and build cities out of it.Pálmadóttir believes the lava that flows from a single eruption could yield enough building material to lay the foundations of an entire city. She has been researching this possibility for more than five years as part of a project she calls Lavaforming. Together with her son and colleague Arnar Skarphéðinsson, she has identified three potential techniques that could change how future homes are designed and built from repurposed lava. Read the full story.—Elissaveta M. Brandon This story is from the most recent edition of our print magazine, which is all about how technology is changing creativity. Subscribe now to read it and to receive future print copies once they land. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 America is failing to win the tech race against ChinaIn fields as diverse as drones and energy. (WSJ $)+ Humanoid robots is an area of particular interest. (Bloomberg $)+ China has accused the US of violating the pair’s trade truce. (FT $) 2 Who is really in charge of DOGE?According to a fired staffer, it wasn’t Elon Musk. (Wired $)+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review) 3 Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital dataIt’s the first time citizens will be able to monetize their digital footprint. (Rest of World) 4 The Trump administration’s anti-vaccine stance is stoking fear among scientistsIt’s slashing funding for mRNA trials, and experts are afraid to speak out. (The Atlantic $)+ This annual shot might protect against HIV infections. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Tech companies want us to spend longer talking to chatbotsThose conversations can easily veer into dangerous territory. (WP $)+ How we use AI in the future is up to us. (New Yorker $)+ This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Tiktok’s mental health videos are rife with misinformationA lot of the advice is useless at best, and harmful at worst. (The Guardian) 7 Lawyers are hooked on ChatGPTEven though it’s inherently unreliable. (The Verge)+ Yet another lawyer has been found referencing nonexistent citations. (The Guardian)+ How AI is introducing errors into courtrooms. (MIT Technology Review) 8 How chefs are using generative AI They’re starting to experiment with using it to create innovative new dishes. (NYT $)+ Watch this robot cook shrimp and clean autonomously. (MIT Technology Review) 9 The influencer suing her rival has dropped her lawsuitThe legal fight over ownership of a basic aesthetic has come to an end. (NBC News) 10 Roblox’s new game has sparked a digital fruit underground marketAnd players are already spending millions of dollars every week. (Bloomberg $) Quote of the day “We can’t substitute complex thinking with machines. AI can’t replace our curiosity, creativity or emotional intelligence.” —Mateusz Demski, a journalist in Poland, tells the Guardian about how his radio station employer laid him off, only to later launch shows fronted by AI-generated presenters. One more thing ​​Adventures in the genetic time machineAn ancient-DNA revolution is turning the high-speed equipment used to study the DNA of living things on to specimens from the past.The technology is being used to create genetic maps of saber-toothed cats, cave bears, and thousands of ancient humans, including Vikings, Polynesian navigators, and numerous Neanderthals. The total number of ancient humans studied is more than 10,000 and rising fast.The old genes have already revealed remarkable stories of human migrations around the globe.But researchers are hoping ancient DNA will be more than a telescope on the past—they hope it will have concrete practical use in the present. Read the full story.  —Antonio Regalado We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + The ancient Persians managed to keep cool using an innovative breeze-catching technique that could still be useful today.+ Knowledge is power—here’s a helpful list of hoaxes to be aware of.+ How said it: Homer Simpson or Pete Hegseth?+ I had no idea London has so many cat statues.

Photo Credit: Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology Ancient DNA from Yunnan Uncovers Ghost Lineage Linked to Tibetan Ancestry Highlights 7,100-year-old Xingyi_EN carries DNA from a mysterious ghost lineage Study links ancient Yunnan DNA to modern Tibetan ancestry Central Yunnan ancestry tied to early Austroasiatic populations Advertisement A new study on a 7,100-year-old skeleton from China has revealed a "ghost" lineage that only existed in theories until now. Skeleton of the early Neolithic woman, known as Xingyi_EN, unearthed at the Xingyi archaeological site in southwestern China's Yunnan province. Her DNA links her to a deeply divergent human population that may have contributed to the ancestry of modern Tibetans. This study also reveals a distinct Central Yunnan ancestry connected to early Austroasiatic-speaking groups. This discovery makes Yunnan as a key region to understand the ancient genetic history of East and Southeast Asia. The detailed analysis of 127 human genomes from southwestern China is published in a study in the journal Science.Xingyi_EN: A Genetic Link to a Mysterious PastAccording to the study, radiocarbon dating indicates Xingyi_EN lived around 7,100 years ago and isotope analysis suggests she lived as a hunter-gatherer. Genetic sequencing revealed her ancestry from a deeply diverged human lineage—now named the Basal Asian Xingyi lineage. This lineage diverged from other modern human groups over 40,000 years ago and remained isolated for thousands of years without mixing with other populations.This "ghost" lineage does not match DNA from Neanderthals or Denisovans but appears to have later contributed to the ancestry of some modern Tibetans. Xingyi_EN represents the first physical evidence of this previously unknown population.Yunnan's significance as a reservoir of deep human diversityMost of the skeletons that the researchers sampled were dated between 1,400 and 7,150 years ago and came from Yunnan province, which today has the highest ethnic and linguistic diversity in all of China."Ancient humans that lived in this region may be key to addressing several remaining questions on the prehistoric populations of East and Southeast Asia," the researchers wrote in the study. Those unanswered questions include the origins of people who live on the Tibetan Plateau, as previous studies have shown that Tibetans have northern East Asian ancestry. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube. Further reading: Ancient DNA, Yunnan, Ghost Lineage, Tibetan Ancestry, Human Evolution, Xingyi_EN, Paleogenetics, Archaeogenomics, Prehistoric Asia, Science Study Gadgets 360 Staff The resident bot. If you email me, a human will respond. More Related Stories

By Ellyn Lapointe Published May 31, 2025 | Comments (0) | Researchers recovered this face-shaped rock from the San Lázaro rock-shelter in central Spain in 2022 © Álvarez-Alonso et al While digging inside a cave in the Spanish city of Segovia, archaeologists uncovered an unusual rock. The hand-sized stone naturally resembled an elongated face, and featured a spot of red pigment made from ochre right on the tip of what may be considered its nose.  “We were all thinking the same thing and looking at each other because of its shape: we were all thinking, ‘This looks like a face,’” David Álvarez Alonso, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid who was part of the dig, told The Guardian. Álvarez Alonso and his colleagues spent the next three years studying this bizarre rock. The researchers posit that 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal dipped their finger in ochre and pressed it onto the stone’s central ridge—leaving behind what is now considered to be the world’s oldest complete human fingerprint. It’s an intriguing finding that could have significant implications, but some experts would like to see more evidence to support this hypothesis.  The team published its findings in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on Saturday, May 24. In the paper, the archaeologists state that the “strategic position” of the dot suggests it is evidence of Neanderthals’ “symbolic behavior.” In other words, it’s a piece of art that “could represent one of the earliest human face symbolizations in prehistory.” “The fact that the [rock] was selected because of its appearance and then marked with ochre shows that there was a human mind capable of symbolizing, imagining, idealizing and projecting his or her thoughts on an object,” the researchers write.  Whether Neanderthals were capable of making art is a subject of ongoing debate, co-author María de Andrés-Herrero, a professor of prehistory at Complutense University, told the BBC. But over the past decade, a growing body of evidence has led many experts to believe that artistic expression emerged earlier in human evolution than previously thought.  The authors of this new study think their stone adds to this evidence. To reach this conclusion, they first needed more data to support the idea that this ancient artist had actually experienced pareidolia: seeing a face in an inanimate object. To that end, they generated a 3D model of the stone’s surface and measured the distances between its features, finding that the red dot—or nose—was placed such that it accurately resembled an actual nose on a human face.  Then, the researchers enlisted the help of geologists to characterize the red dot, confirming that it was made with ochre. Forensic police experts then used multispectral analysis—a technique that can reveal details invisible to the naked eye—to confirm that the red dot had been applied with a fingertip. Their analysis uncovered a fingerprint that could have belonged to an adult male Neanderthal inside the dot.  “Once we had that and all the other pieces, context and information, we advanced the theory that this could be a pareidolia, which then led to a human intervention in the form of the red dot,” Álvarez Alonso told The Guardian. “Without that red dot, you can’t make any claims about the object.” But Gilliane Monnier, a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota who studies Neanderthal behavior, is not totally convinced by the researchers’ findings. “The fact that there are these natural depressions—and that we can measure the distance between them and argue that it’s a face—that’s all well and good,” Monnier, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Gizmodo. “But that doesn’t give us any indication that the Neanderthals who [occupied this cave] saw a face in that [rock].”  What’s more, she is skeptical of the researchers’ claim that the red dot was actually made with a human fingertip. It’s possible, she said, that the coloring and fingerprint-like ridges formed naturally. “I would be interested in seeing an explanation by a geologist—someone trained in geology—saying the likelihood of this forming by natural, geological or geomicrobial processes is a very low likelihood,” Monnier said.  The researchers, too, acknowledge that “it is unlikely that all doubts surrounding this hypothesis can be fully dispelled,” and state that the pareidolia hypothesis should not be seen as a definitive claim, but rather a possible explanation for this object based on the evidence. So it’s hard to say whether this study clarifies or complicates our understanding of how the human mind evolved the ability to create art. The face-shaped rock is an intriguing piece of the puzzle, but more research is needed to figure out where it fits. Daily Newsletter You May Also Like By Margherita Bassi Published May 28, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 27, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 25, 2025 By Natalia Mesa Published May 13, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published May 8, 2025 By Margherita Bassi Published April 23, 2025

A projectile point, made from the bone of a grey whale, from the Duruthy rock shelter in Landes, FranceAlexandre Lefebvre Hunter-gatherers living along the shores of the Bay of Biscay crafted hunting tools from the bones of at least five different whale species 20,000 years ago, marking the oldest evidence of manufacturing objects from whale remains. Although there is evidence of Neanderthals gathering and eating molluscs in what is now southern Spain around 150,000 years ago, current findings suggest that ancient humans didn’t regularly use coastal resources for food and raw materials until around 19,000 years ago…

New Research Nimble-Minded Neanderthals May Have Used These Wooden Spears to Hunt 200,000 Years Ago New research shows that the weapons found in Germany are much younger than previously thought, suggesting they were made by skilled Neanderthal craftspeople The Schöningen spears on display in Germany Julian Stratenschulte / Picture Alliance via Getty Images In the 1990s, archaeologists working near the German town of Schöningen made a remarkable find: a set of well-preserved wooden spears crafted from spruce and pine, along with stone tools and the butchered remains of more than 50 horses. Researchers initially thought the Schöningen spears were around 400,000 years old and later revised that estimate to roughly 300,000 years old. They suspected the spears—which are among the oldest known complete hunting weapons—belonged to an early human ancestor called Homo heidelbergensis. Now, however, they’re revising the timeline once again: According to a new paper published in the journal Science Advances, the spears are around 200,000 years old—much younger than previously thought. The new date suggests the weapons may have belonged to Neanderthals, instead of H. heidelbergensis. This theory makes sense to some researchers because, around the same time, Neanderthals were starting to exhibit more complex behaviors, like making stone tools and deploying sophisticated hunting tactics. During this period, known as the Middle Paleolithic, Neanderthals also began living longer, which suggests that they benefited from these lifestyle and behavior advancements. Based on the horse remains found at the site, it appears that hunters cleverly trapped them near the edge of a prehistoric lake. Researchers think the spears were carefully hand-made by skilled craftspeople. “They offer compelling evidence of sophisticated hunting strategies which would have required better cognitive abilities and the development of more complex communication, planning and social structures,” says lead author Jarod Hutson, an archaeologist at Germany’s Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie, in a statement. “The updated timeline for Schöningen now aligns it with a growing number of sites which together indicate a significant leap in early human hunting capabilities during this period.” If the spears were created and used by humans’ closest prehistoric relatives, this revelation would add to the growing body of evidence that “Neanderthal brain development and social structure were more advanced than previously believed,” writes Austin Harvey of All That’s Interesting. However, not everyone is confident of the new date—or the theory that the spears belonged to Neanderthals. “For the moment, I find the arguments interesting, but not absolutely convincing,” says Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist at the University of Göttingen in Germany who wasn’t involved with the research, to the Associated Press’ Adithi Ramakrishnan. To determine the new timeline, researchers analyzed fossilized freshwater snail shells found in the same layer of dirt as the spears. They honed in on amino acids that were locked in the shells by tiny “trapdoors” called opercula. Because amino acids break down at predictable rates, researchers could use them to estimate the age of the fossils. This method is known as amino acid geochronology. It’s one of the tools researchers have at their disposal for dating artifacts, along with radiocarbon dating, which measures the amount of radioactive carbon-14 present in organic materials, and luminescence dating, which measures the last time sediments were exposed to sunlight. Even with such techniques, however, precisely estimating the age of artifacts can be challenging. Anything scientists can do to narrow down the timeframe helps make historic sites “more useful for answering archaeological questions about human evolution and cultural development,” says study co-author Kirsty Penkman, a geochemist at the University of York in England, to Science’s Andrew Curry. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Chimpanzees Perform First Aid on Each Other, Study Finds, and It May Shed Light on the Evolution of Human Health Care Researchers describe cases of chimps tending to others’ wounds, as well as a chimp that freed another from a snare A new study suggests chimpanzees don't just perform self-care—in some cases, they look out for each other. Elodie Freymann Chimpanzees use medicinal plants to perform first aid on others, according to a new study that points toward the origin of health care in humans. Researchers combined 30 years of written observations of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest with eight months of their collected data and suggest the animals provide care—not just to themselves, but to other chimpanzees. Overall, they documented 41 cases of medical care in the animals. Most involved instances of the chimpanzees practicing self-care and hygiene, such as using a leaf to wipe themselves after an excretion or chewing a plant and applying it to a wound. But seven of the instances involved chimpanzees providing care to others, and in four of those cases, the animals weren’t closely related. The work was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution The study challenges assumptions about non-human animals’ ability to provide altruistic care, write the authors. “One of the things humans have clung onto is that we’re this very special species, because we are capable of altruism and we’re capable of empathy,” says Elodie Freymann, a primatologist at the University of Oxford in England and lead author of the study, to Evan Bush at NBC News. “Animals are helping each other out. They’re capable of identifying others in need and then addressing those specific needs.” Chimpanzees use medicinal leaves to perform first aid, scientists discover Watch on For instance, the researchers uncovered an incident from 2008, when scientists had observed a male chimp freeing an unrelated female from a nylon snare set by hunters to trap game. In 2012, a male chimp sucked the wound of an unrelated male. The work is part of a growing body of research that sheds light on the evolution of health care, especially since chimpanzees are among humans’ closest living relatives. The study “offers evidence that some of the foundations of human medicine—recognizing suffering, applying treatments and caring for others—are not uniquely human, but part of our deep evolutionary heritage,” says Christine Webb, a primatologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research, to Martin J. Kernan at Science News. Chimpanzees aren’t the only apes that self-medicate. Last year, scientists observed a wild orangutan using a known medicinal plant to heal a facial wound. Other animals, like elephants and lizards, appear to eat medicinal plants as self-care. “In our ancestors, we have examples of health care in humans since Neanderthals or even before, but what’s very interesting is that we still don’t understand fully how these kind of exploratory behaviors evolved,” says Alessandra Mascaro, a primatologist at Osnabrück University in Germany who was not involved in the study, to NBC News. “We are just scratching the surface.” Freymann still wants to understand why chimps don’t always provide care to each other if they have the ability, she tells Science News. “If chimps sometimes know how to help others get out of snares, for example, why aren’t they helping all chimps get out?” she says. “Why are they being selective about this care, and why do some chimps seem to warrant it, while others don’t?” One possibility is that because the animals in Budongo face such a high risk of injury or death from snares, they’re more likely to take care of each other’s injuries than other chimpanzee groups, according to a statement from the journal. But more data is still needed to confirm this. It also remains unclear whether the caring behavior is learned, or if it’s something instinctual for the animals. But once, Freymann witnessed a young chimp looking on as an adult put chewed-up bark on his own knee, reports Science News. The team also found a report of a young chimp helping her mother tend to a wound after observing the adult caring for her injury. “I’m not making a case that every certain medicinal behavior is learned,” Freymann says to Vivian Ho at the Washington Post, “but I think it’s not out of the question that chimpanzees are capable of possessing medicinal culture.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

If you’ve stayed in a bath or pool long enough, you’ve likely noticed your skin, especially your fingers, become wrinkly or pruny. This is caused by your blood vessels contracting. When blood vessels narrow, the skin’s area is reduced, and your skin forms wrinkles. While your pruny fingers may seem off-putting, this evolutionary advantage actually helps you grip things easier underwater, compared to non-pruny hands. However, as your fingers wrinkle underwater, do they always wrinkle in the same pattern? That was the question on one young student’s mind. And their question inspired a new study, published in the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. Why Our Skin Gets WrinklyImages of topographical skin wrinkles overlaid on each other from the two different time points, 24 h apart, with opacity levels of (A) 0%, (B) 50%, (C) 100%. (Image Credit: Guy German) Guy German, an associate professor at Binghamton University and a faculty member at the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering had published several studies on human skin, including a 2020 study that focuses on what happens to the skin when it’s exposed to water for long periods of time. In a 2023 article with The Conversation, German answered a young reader's question about why our skin gets wrinkly in water. The answer to that question, however, sparked another. “A student asked, ‘Yeah, but do the wrinkles always form in the same way?’ And I thought: I haven’t the foggiest clue!” said German in a press release. “So it led to this research to find out.”Read More: A Damaging Hand Disease Has Neanderthal RootsSame Wrinkles on Pruny Fingers  Representative wrinkle pairs established and numbered across (A) Day 0 and (B) 24+ hr later on a subject's ring finger. Black curves denote clearly paired wrinkle morphologies. Red curves denote inconsistent wrinkles between the two time points. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.) (Image Credit: Guy German)To answer the question, German and Rachel Laytin, a biomedical engineering graduate from Binghamton University, submerged research participants' fingers in water for 30 minutes and took photos of the pruny fingers. After 24 hours, they repeated the same process with the same participants. After analyzing the photos, the research team found that the participant has the same wrinkly pattern after each submersion. “Blood vessels don’t change their position much — they move around a bit, but in relation to other blood vessels, they’re pretty static,” German said in a press release. “That means the wrinkles should form in the same manner, and we proved that they do.”During this study, German and Laytin made an additional discovery. “We’ve heard that wrinkles don’t form in people who have median nerve damage in their fingers,” German said in a press release. “One of my students told us, ‘I’ve got median nerve damage in my fingers.’ So we tested him — no wrinkles!”Advancing Forensic ScienceWith this new research, not only does that student have an answer to their question, but there may be a way to use this data to help assist in forensic science. This new advancement could help forensic teams better identify crime scene fingerprints and bodies with prolonged water exposure. German can relate to the possibility of these new methods, as his father is a retired police officer in the U.K. who experienced some of these forensic setbacks. “Biometrics and fingerprints are built into my brain,” he said in a press release. “I always think about this sort of stuff, because it’s fascinating.”German is excited to continue his research and answer more of his students’ questions. “I feel like a kid in a candy store, because there’s so much science here that I don’t know. We thank the people at The Conversation and the wonderful question they asked us, because it does create cool new science,” German concluded in a press release. This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.Read More: Why Do We Have Fingerprints?Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials. On the repeatability of wrinkling topography patterns in the fingers of water immersed human skinExtreme Mechanics Letters. Mechanical, compositional, and microstructural changes caused by human skin macerationAs the marketing coordinator at Discover Magazine, Stephanie Edwards interacts with readers across Discover's social media channels and writes digital content. Offline, she is a contract lecturer in English & Cultural Studies at Lakehead University, teaching courses on everything from professional communication to Taylor Swift, and received her graduate degrees in the same department from McMaster University. You can find more of her science writing in Lab Manager and her short fiction in anthologies and literary magazine across the horror genre.