news 2016

Researchers have developed a new method for reading the history and "family trees" of cells. Called MEMOIR, or Memory by Engineered Mutagenesis with Optical In situ Readout, the technique can record the life history of animal cells'their relationships with other cells, communication patterns, and the influential events that have shaped them.

Thought to have arrived from China in 2000 BC, latest research shows domesticated rice agriculture in India and Pakistan existed centuries earlier, and suggests systems of seasonal crop variation that would have provided a rich and diverse diet for the Bronze Age residents of the Indus valley.

An inter-disciplinary team of scientists and archaeologists have discovered widespread evidence of prehistoric milk production in southern Europe. The study uncovered evidence that humans have been utilising milk and dairy products across the northern Mediterranean region from the onset of agriculture - some 9,000 years ago.

Heidelberg University has acquired a new research training group in the field of interdisciplinary American studies. The German Research Foundation has approved a grant application worth 3.5 million euros. The group, focusing on 'Authority and Trust in American Culture, Society, History and Politics', is based at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) and rests on the shoulders of ten researchers from different disciplines including geography, history, linguistics, literature, political science, and cultural and religious studies.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A study of the genomes of 25 individuals who lived 1,000 to 6,000 years ago on the north coast of present-day British Columbia, and 25 of their descendants who still live in the region today, opens a new window on the catastrophic consequences of European colonization for indigenous peoples in that part of the world.

At 6000 years old, this copper amulet is the earliest lost-wax cast object known. Now, researchers have finally discovered how it was made, using a novel UV-visible photoluminescence spectral imaging approach. All the parameters of elaboration process, such as the purity of the copper, and melting and solidification temperatures, are now accurately known.

New research finds far more abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania than previously thought and provides a framework for identifying wells across the United States and globally that are the worst methane leakers. A small percentage of abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania produces the vast majority of the state's methane emissions, according to Stanford and Princeton scientists and their colleagues.

More than 90% of ivory in large seized shipments came from elephants that died less than three years before, according to a new study led by the University of Utah and involving the University of Oxford. Combining radiocarbon ivory dating with genetic analysis provides a picture of when and where poachers are killing elephants - useful tools in the ongoing battle against illegal animal product trade.

A combination of historical and genetic research reveals the error and hype that led to the coining of the term 'Patient Zero' and the blaming of one man for the spread of HIV across North America.

950 years after William of Normandy landed on English soil in one of Britain's landmark historic moments, Cardiff University researchers are aiming to discover what impact the invasion had on diet, cooking habits and health. The Dietary Impact of the Norman Conquest will examine human and animal remains and pottery from preand post-Conquest Oxford to tell the story of the impact of 14 October 1066, better known as the Battle of Hastings.

Archaeologists have created a new database from the teeth of prehistoric humans found at ancient burial sites in Britain and Ireland that tell us a lot about their climate, their diet and even how far they may have travelled. In a paper, led by Dr Maura Pellegrini from the University of Oxford, researchers say that individuals in prehistoric Britain were highly mobile.

By combining traditional archaeology with 3D technology, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have managed to reconstruct a house in Pompeii to its original state before the volcano eruption of Mount Vesuvius thousands of years ago. Unique video material has now been produced, showing their creation of a 3D model of an entire block of houses.

The people of Vanuatu today are descended from Asia first of all. Their original base population is Asian. They were straight out of Taiwan and perhaps the northern Philippines. The origins of Vanuatu and Tonga's first inhabitants has been revealed in a surprise discovery made by ANU archaeologists in the first major study of ancient DNA (aDNA) from the Pacific Islands.

The first significant investigation into the genomics of Aboriginal Australians has uncovered several major findings about early human populations. These include evidence of a single 'Out of Africa? migration event, and of a previously unidentified, 'ghost-like' population spread which provided a basis for the modern Aboriginal cultural landscape.

Research involving the University is changing our understanding about when Mesolithic people began to consume cultivated plants, the precursor to our modern-day cereals. In a new joint study conducted by researchers at Cambridge, Cardiff, UCL and York universities, direct evidence that Mesolithic foragers of this region were consuming domestic cereals by 6600 BC has been found through the study of dental calculus from prehistoric remains.

Scientists have identified a new genetic mutation responsible for the black colouring of the coats of pigs in Hawaii, which is different to the Asian or European mutations leading to the black colour. Their paper suggests that human societies have independently selected domesticated pigs that express the trait of black-coloured coats on at least three separate occasions because they liked the novelty colour.

Einstein Foundation Berlin Announced Support for Cross-institutional Centre as of 2018 ' 293/2016 from Sep 07, 2016 The Einstein Foundation Berlin has announced that it will be funding the first Einstein Centre devoted to the humanities as of 2018 in Berlin. The new Einstein Centre will be called Chronoi and will build on the unique cross-institutional cooperation that exists within ancient studies research in Berlin.

It shows that the first modern people of South East Asia were just as culturally complex as those in Europe and Africa and that it was not the cultural backwater as it was once thought to be. Archaeologists at The Australian National University (ANU) have unearthed a 37,000-year-old decorative shell bead on the eastern tip of East Timor, providing further evidence that the first modern people of South East Asian were more culturally advanced than previously thought.

Using ancient DNA, researchers have created a unique picture of how a prehistoric migration route evolved over thousands of years - revealing that it could not have been used by the first people to enter the Americas, as traditionally thought.

DNA found in human bones on two Turkish dig sites has shed new light on the ancestry of European farmers, demonstrating a close link between Europe and Asia. University of Queensland researchers collaborated with universities from the UK, Turkey, Sweden and Norway to discover the DNA was from some of the earliest farming villages in central Turkey, proving European farmers were descended from early cultivators who migrated into Europe 8000 to 9000 years ago.