Sam Walters

2 days ago | discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters

The Human History of Fire Burnt Fallow Deer Bones from Qesem Cave. Qesem Cave Project. (Image Credit: Tel Aviv University)Humans have used fire for a long time. In fact, the traces of fire found at archeological sites suggest that human fire use started around a million years ago or more, though that use wasn't widespread until later, around 400,000 years ago.

3 days ago | discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters

Bacteria wouldn't be so bad if we could tell them what to do. "Stop spreading! Stop sticking together! Stop fending off our antibiotics!" A new method is starting to allow scientists to do just that, letting them use light to control certain functions of bacteria. Bacteria are behind a variety of diseases, from strep to staph to pneumonia and meningitis, and they attack our bodies in a variety of ways, as well, including through the production of toxins that damage and disrupt our cells.

5 days ago | discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters

Recent research has finally started to show how humans first arrived in South America. Indeed, these studies have revealed that humans settled the continent from the north, having reached the region through the Isthmus of Panama - the thin strip of land that connects North and South America. "Genetic studies on ancient and present-day Indigenous populations have substantially contributed to the understanding of the settlement of the Americas," the authors of the study stated.

1 week ago | discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters

A new study in suggests that changes in a gene in Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague, could've added to the length of two plague pandemics, including the pandemic that started with the "Black Death." The study suggests that less virulent plague bacteria could've caused longer plague pandemics - thanks to the fact that infected rodents lived (and spread plague) for longer periods of time before dying from their infections. The bacterium Y.

1 week ago | discovermagazine.com | Sam Walters

For a few months of the year, the Alaskan Arctic becomes flooded with birds. From shorebirds to waterfowl, these avians arrive in the spring to breed, nest, and raise their young, and to take advantage of the ample plants and prey (invertebrates and other animals) that thrive in Alaska's short summers. They do it today, and they did it around 73 million years ago, too.