Nature Hub

From  Smithsonian Magazine,     By- Rayan McRae and Briana Pobiner                        Edited by Amal Udawatta Smithsonian paleoanthropologists reveal the year’s most riveting findings about our close relatives and ancestors A team led by Laurits Skov and Benjamin Peter from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology sequenced nuclear, mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA of 13 Neanderthal individuals. From these sequences, they determined that two of the Neanderthals represent a father-daughter pair and that another two are cousins     Tom Björklund With many projects around the world proceeding despite the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers across a variety of fields made multiple exciting breakthroughs on human origins, gaining more insight into topics ranging from food and drink to interspecies cooperation. Telling us more about our food, our health, our close relatives and ancestors, and even our animal friends, these 14 new discoveries scientists made this year shed more

  Margaret Osborne Daily Correspondent - Smithsonian Magazine, Edited by -Amal Udawatta, Glass frog photographed during sleep and while active, showing the differences in red blood cells within the circulatory system.   Jesse Delia via  AMNH When a tiny glass frog dozes off to sleep, its body becomes so transparent it’s almost invisible. The amphibian’s glass-clear skin casts  no shadows . Even the red blood disappears from its veins. It’s an unusual trick—most see-through animals are aquatic, such as  icefish  or  jellyfish , which don’t produce hemoglobin or red blood cells.  “Transparency is both rare and really hard to do, because our tissues are full of things that absorb and scatter light,”  Jesse Delia , a researcher at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, tells  National Geographic ’s Jason Bittel. “Red blood cells also absorb a lot of light.”  But when the nocturnal frogs are active, blood begins to snake again through their circulatory systems, forming a visible maz

  By Emma Saunders Arts and Entertainment reporter,  BBC News Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva, IMAGE SOURCE, PENGUIN By Emma Saunders Arts and Entertainment reporter Welcome book lovers! It's that time of year to cosy up and feast your eyes on the luscious literary offerings for the year ahead. We've rounded up a select few of 2023's major titles (apologies to those who missed the cut but this article may otherwise have ended up longer than War and Peace). First up, it's memoirs and we kick off the year with a certain  Prince Harry 's autobiography, Spare, a reference to the phrase  "the heir and the spare" , one assumes. It's expected to include the prince's full account behind his decision to give up royal duties and move to the US (although after Oprah and a six-hour Netflix documentary, how much more can be left to reveal?) While it promises "raw, unflinching honesty", we'll have to wait and see just how many bridges it will burn