Month: May 2020

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A 46,000-year-old tooth and a handful of bone fragments are the oldest direct evidence of our species’ presence in Europe, a recent study reports. They lived and died during an important period of transition, when our species and Neanderthals were meeting and interacting—a period we don’t currently know much about. The dates shed a little light on at least a piece of that eventful time.

Us and them

The last trace of Neanderthals in Europe dates to around 40,000 years ago. Anything very much older than that is almost certainly a piece of Neanderthal culture and made by Neanderthal hands. Anything very much younger than that must have been the work of our own species, long after the last Neanderthals had died out. But for a few thousand years, Homo sapiens and Neanderthals shared a continent.

We’re not sure exactly how long our two species coexisted, and that’s why Bacho Kiro Cave matters so much. At sites without any hominin fossils, archaeologists have to rely on the age of the artifacts if they want to draw conclusions about which species made them. But at Bacho Kiro, archaeologists found fragments of radiocarbon-dateable human bone mixed with stone tools and other artifacts. It’s the Paleolithic version of a smoking gun.

Enlarge / Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) speak in January. The four men are leading advocates for limiting government surveillance powers. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Update (3:15pm ET): The Senate has passed legislation extending FBI spying powers by an 80-16 vote. Because it was amended, it must go back to the House of Representatives for another vote.

Original story (12:30pm ET) follows:

An effort to protect Americans' browsing and search histories from warrantless government surveillance failed by a single vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The privacy measure, sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) got 59 votes, one vote fewer than was needed to overcome a filibuster.

Enlarge / Nigel appears unconcerned about catching coronavirus, probably because he isn't allowed to go beyond his garden without a human escort. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Domestic cats can catch the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and when kept in very close proximity, they can infect other cats. That's the finding of a letter published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. In the study, conducted by a team of virologists led by Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, three young domestic cats were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and one day later each was then kept in close proximity to an uninfected cat. Within five days, all three of the previously uninfected cats also tested positive for the virus.

This isn't the first report of feline infection with SARS-CoV-2. In early April, a Chinese study published in Science found that ferrets (which are used in research into respiratory diseases) and cats—but not dogs, pigs, chickens, or ducks—could be infected with the novel coronavirus, and cats could become infected via airborne transmission. A week later, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed two cases of pet cats that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. And by late April, eight big cats at the Bronx Zoo (a mix of tigers and lions) had also become infected.

It's hard to get an exact count of pet cats in the US and whether they do or don't outnumber pet dogs. Even if felines are only the second-most popular American pet, this news will surely raise some pulses. But there's plenty of reasons to keep calm.

Enlarge / Technicians at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans moved the Space Launch System's liquid hydrogen tank from the factory to the dock, where it was loaded onto the Pegasus barge on Dec. 14, 2018. (credit: NASA/Steven Seipel)

NASA has finally set a new launch date for the oft-delayed first flight of its Space Launch System rocket. The formal date should be announced next week, a senior engineer at the agency said.

During a committee meeting of NASA's Advisory Council, Tom Whitmeyer said the launch date would be "towards the end of next year." This mission, dubbed Artemis I by NASA, is seen as the agency's first step back toward the Moon. The uncrewed test flight, which will last between 26 and 42 days, will insert Orion into a lunar orbit before the deep space capsule returns to Earth.

Under development since 2011, the Space Launch System rocket has cost NASA nearly $20 billion and has been criticized both for its cost and slow pace of development. But largely because of unshaken Congressional support, NASA has continued its plodding development.

In 2005, the Finnish game studio Remedy Entertainment was stuck. Its members had been riding high on two mega-smash Max Payne games in a row, but they'd decided to drastically change course with their next series, Alan Wake.

The resulting pitch was ambitious: an open-world, free-roaming adventure with a complicated day/night cycle. But after putting together a flashy demo and landing a publisher in Microsoft, the folks at Remedy had to be honest with themselves: their next game wasn't looking good. Lead writer Sam Lake puts it frankly: "For a long while, we didn't have anything."

A metaphor “for the whole team’s struggle”

In our latest War Stories video feature, embedded above, Lake describes how Alan Wake was born from the studio's desire to distance itself from the rigid structure of its Max Payne games while still making room for the studio's "cinematic" flair. The team eventually pulled it off—we said as much in 2010—but while some of the big ideas from the original pitch survived, many did not.