Alison George

2 months ago | newscientist.com | Alison George

Venus figurines are most famous for their sexual features. These often-voluptuous carvings of female forms, made between around 30,000 and 20,000 years ago, have been interpreted as ritual fertility figures, mother goddesses and self-portraits. One thing they are generally not seen as is fashion plates. Yet some of them provide tantalising glimpses of what the well-dressed Stone Age woman was wearing. One, from Kostenki in Russia, sports a wrap-style robe with straps. Others have string skirts.

Jan 20, 2025 | newscientist.com | Alison George

There are many things we can blame for a bad night’s sleep – screen time, stress, too much booze. Now there is another culprit: the microbes in our gut. This article is part of special series investigating key questions about sleep. Read more here. We have long known that our microbiome has a powerful influence on our health, and new research is revealing that this extends to our sleep, too. But it is a complex, two-way relationship.

Oct 8, 2024 | newscientist.com | Alison George

Around 41,000 years ago, the very last Neanderthal took their final breath. At that moment, we became the only remaining hominins, the sole survivors of the once diverse family of bipedal apes. We will never know exactly when or where this momentous event took place, but we do know the Neanderthals died out suspiciously close to the time when modern humans arrived in their territory.

Sep 20, 2024 | msn.com | Alison George

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Sep 20, 2024 | newscientist.com | Alison George

A six-year investigation into the vast Thwaites glacier in Antarctica has concluded with a grim outlook on its future. Often dubbed the “doomsday glacier”, this huge mass of ice is comparable in size to Britain or Florida and its collapse alone would raise sea levels by 65 centimetres. Worse, this is expected to trigger a more widespread loss of the ice sheet covering West Antarctica, causing a calamitous sea level rise of 3.3 metres, threatening cities like New York, Kolkata and Shanghai.