A study led by scientists of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Hamburg presents evidence of the amplification of optical phonons in a solid by intense terahertz laser pulses. These light bursts excite atomic vibrations to very large amplitudes, where their…
Oldest Bubonic Plague Genome Decoded
An international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has analyzed two 3,800-year-old Y. pestis genomes that suggest a Bronze Age origin for bubonic plague. The strain identified by the researchers was recovered from individuals in a double burial in the Samara region of Russia, who both had the…
Nuclear DNA is Oldest Ever Recovered in Africa
An international team of researchers — led by Johannes Krause and Choongwon Jeong from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (Jena, Germany), and Abdeljalil Bouzouggar from the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine (Rabat, Morocco) and including scientists from the Mohammed V University in Rabat, the Natural History…
Humans Have Been Altering Tropical Forests for at Least 45,000 Years
The first review of the global impact of humans on tropical forests in the ancient past shows that humans have been altering these environments for at least 45,000 years. This counters the view that tropical forests were pristine natural environments prior to modern agriculture and industrialization. The study, published today in Nature Plants, found that humans…