It’s been exactly 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci died, and even after all this time we’re still trying to discover new things about the famous Italian polymath. Two scientists have studied historical accounts of da Vinci’s life and come to the conclusion that he had a behavioural condition – attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or

The battle for the thermostat has practically become a cliché in office culture, but it looks like the reasons may not be just about comfort. A new study suggests the temperature of a room also impacts our productivity, and for men and women that cognitive sweet spot is slightly different. Plenty of anecdotes and surveys

If you think the beer at your local bar tastes a little stale, spare a thought for the researchers who brewed up a beer from yeast estimated to be 5,000 years old. The yeast was plucked from pottery used to produce beer in ancient times, extracted from the nanopores of the clay and converted into

As the world grows ever more urban, the lack of natural outdoor space could have lifelong consequences for our mental health. Growing up around greener spaces has consistently been linked to better health outcomes, and new research suggests these benefits could last a lifetime. It’s one of the first epidemiological studies to show an association

Jade occupied a special place in the mysterious civilisation of the Maya people, crafted into elaborate trinkets rich with ancient meaning and lore. But this prized stone wasn’t reserved solely for ornamental finery. Jade – in the form of its mineral variety, jadeite – also seems to have had its uses in the toil of

Thirty years ago, archaeologists digging at one of England’s earliest medieval villages discovered the remains of 73 worn cooking pots.  Used for the last time half a century ago, they still hold tiny remnants of their last meal. Which means they provide fascinating insight into what medieval people actually ate on a day-to-day basis. Chemically

Consider yourself lucky if you’re in a job that you love, but be aware that there’s a potential downside – other people might take advantage of your passion for your work. New research shows that managers often set extra hours without pay, or give out demeaning tasks to employees, to those who are particularly passionate

They say a tree never forgets, and apparently, neither does its resin. For more than ten thousand years, an ancient chewing gum, made from the tar of a birch bark tree, has held the memory of Scandinavia’s first human settlers. Discovered in the 1990s, in a prehistoric hunter-fisher site on the Swedish coast, known as the Huseby

Unknown to many travellers in southeast Asia, the ‘jars of the dead’ in Laos are a 2,000-year-old mystery that has never been solved. Speckled across thousands of square kilometres of the Xieng Khouang plateau – now known as the ‘Plain of Jars’ for that very reason – these empty megalithic structures from the Iron Age

In our world, there exists an ancient and cryptic book that reads beyond human understanding. Known as the Voynich manuscript, this artefact dating from the 15th century has practically turned into modern legend. Like King Arthur’s ‘sword in the stone’, the modern ‘world’s most mysterious book’ has attracted a host of curious readers determined to

Perhaps your teacher is just a good a judge of your academic prowess as an exam paper – and that could help reduce some of the exam workload on kids as they go through school. Researchers looked at data collected on more than 5,000 pairs of twins in the UK, and found that teacher assessments

Warning: Full spoilers below for Game of Thrones Season 8, episode 5, “The Bells.” What do you do if you’ve named your baby after a genocidal maniac? That’s the question facing thousands of parents in America this morning after last night’s Game of Thrones took a very dark turn in the story arc of one

The grand, sprawling palace built by the Roman Emperor Nero nearly 2,000 years ago has been keeping a secret. While working on restorations, archaeologists found a secret chamber – a large underground room decorated with murals depicting both real and mythical creatures. In red and ochre hues, with traces of gilding, centaurs dance across the

Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” quite like pancakes. That’s probably what IHOP had in mind when it tweeted about the holiday this morning. But things quickly got a lot weirder. “If you have pancakes in your tum tum, does that make you a pancake mum mum? Happy Mother’s Day to ALL the mums out there!”

For 1,400 years, an underground burial chamber lay untouched in the British countryside, hiding its long-dead denizen and his royal secrets. Then, in 2003, construction workers in the town of Prittlewell (about 40 miles from London) were expanding a roadway when they stumbled upon the remarkable tomb. Over time, researchers unearthed a lyre, gold coins,

Today, an unexpected twist in the whale tale that’s captured the world’s attention: In April, a group of fishermen in Norway discovered an unusually tame beluga whale wearing a harness seemingly meant to hold a camera. Written on the harness? The words “Equipment of St. Petersburg.” Enter speculation that the whale was a Russian spy.

A man has given back a meter-long stone core he took from Stonehenge more than 60 years ago. Robert Phillips removed the sample during an archeological operation in 1958, where he was working to help reinforce a cracked stone, according to Historic England, the charity which preserves the site. Philips kept it with him for

Bank notes can have similarities to books we put on our shelves to show off but have never really closely examined – let alone read. Millions of copies, tucked away in people’s homes, gradually changing from their “just purchased” clean look to a more yellowed afterlife. But sometimes, after months or years, someone finally takes

A grave of neatly arranged bones near the modern day Polish village of Koszyce captures a tragic moment in history, hinting at a man’s return from afar to find his family massacred at the hands of an enemy. While we can only imagine the personal story that unfolded some 5,000 years ago, a fresh look

A full set of Gym Badges isn’t the only way to tell a true Pokémon player from a novice. Stanford researchers have now found that those adults who played the video game for hours as a kid, have an area in their brain that holds the memory. Tucked behind the ear in a region that usually

Native American shamans living in South America 1,000 years ago had quite the pharmacopoeia in their toolkits. A shaman’s bag found in Bolivia contained a special pouch with traces of multiple psychotropic plants inside, as well as a pretty impressive assembly of paraphernalia. In addition to the pouch, stitched together from three fox snouts, the

Sometimes it seems as if life is passing us by. When we are children, time ambles by, with endless car journeys and summer holidays which seem to last forever. But as adults, time seems to speed up at a frightening rate, with Christmas and birthdays arriving more quickly every year. But perhaps it doesn’t need

Scientists in the UK recently reported that a bone that was thought to be lost to evolution is making a comeback. The little bone, known as the fabella (little bean), is found at the back of the knee – if it is found at all. The scientists discovered that people were nearly three-and-a-half times more

It was August 13, 1945, and the ‘demon core’ was poised, waiting to be unleashed onto a stunned Japan still reeling in fresh chaos from the deadliest attacks anyone had ever seen. A week earlier, ‘Little Boy’ had detonated over Hiroshima, followed swiftly by ‘Fat Man’ in Nagasaki. These were the first and only nuclear

The vocabulary we currently use to describe sexual orientation is hopelessly inadequate, with labels like ‘gay’, ‘straight’ and ‘bi’ falling far short of the complex reality, a large long-term study suggests. Far from being being a fixed preference, the findings suggest that sexual identity and attraction undergo extensive and often subtle changes throughout a person’s life,

Scientists have found that people who constantly get bothered by grammatical errors online have “less agreeable” personalities than those who just let them slide. And those friends who are super-sensitive to typos on your Facebook page? Psychological testing reveals they’re generally less open, and are also more likely to be judging you for your mistakes

Leonardo da Vinci is generally recognised as one of the great figures of the Renaissance and one of the greatest ever polymaths. As the world marks the 500th anniversary of his death, it’s important to look at some of the ways in which he showed that – as well as being a painter, sculptor and

Beehives were deliberately set on fire at a bee yard in Brazoria County, Texas, on the weekend, killing half a million bees in an act described as “beyond comprehension”. Volunteers discovered the wreckage on the morning of Saturday, 27 April. “Someone did major damage to a BCBA Bee Yard in Alvin last night,” wrote the

A Denisovan jawbone has been discovered in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau, indicating that Homo sapiens were not the first humans to conquer such heights. Previously known only through fossils from a Siberian Altai mountain cave, the Denisovans, a mysterious species of ancient humans, are considered a sister group to Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis). This

Researchers have translated famous ancient symbols in a temple in Turkey, and they tell the story of a devastating comet impact more than 13,000 years ago. Cross-checking the event with computer simulations of the Solar System around that time, researchers in 2017 suggested that the carvings could describe a comet impact that occurred around 10,950

Optimism is often considered a finite human resource: for the young, with all their endless opportunities, the virtue is abundant; for the old and embittered, a mere memory. Life, it turns out, may not leave us quite so jaded. No matter how many hurdles a human may endure, a new study has found that as

If we told you not to think about a red apple, would an image of a red apple immediately pop into your mind? We’re less adept at controlling our thoughts than we might think, according to new research. Even those who are relatively good at managing what they’re thinking about on a conscious level can

A strange encounter between fishermen and a mysteriously geared-up white beluga whale in the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway has raised suspicions the animal might be a trained recruit from a Russian military facility. The whale (Delphinapterus leucas), which was discovered near the island of Ingøya in Arctic Norway, appeared tame and well-adapted

Within half a century, it’s possible that Facebook could be overrun by the dead, with more deceased users making up the world’s largest social network than living, active people, a new study suggests. This provocative projection comes from a pair of researchers at the University of Oxford, who ran the numbers on Facebook’s massive audience

For as long as we’ve explored the oceans there have been tales of monsters lurking below. No doubt many sightings have been glimpses of actual marine life, but emerging sightings of long-necked serpentine beasts such as the Loch Ness Monster aren’t as easy to explain. Speculation on what could inspire changes in the old sea

Any night owls reading this will be familiar with the struggle of constantly trying to fit into a morning person’s world. And researchers might have finally identified the genetic typo that causes this social jetlag. A 2017 study revealed that many people who stay up late and struggle to wake up in the morning aren’t

A bone once thought to be almost lost to evolution and rare in modern humans is making a strange comeback. Known as the fabella bone, this knee bone was once very rare in human beings, but is now three times more common in human knees than it was a hundred years ago. That’s based on

When Jean-Paul Marat’s killer, Charlotte Corday, was executed by guillotine in 1793, a man named Francois le Gros allegedly lifted her head and slapped both cheeks. Onlookers claimed that Corday’s face took on an angry expression and her cheeks became flushed. There are other reports from history of severed heads that seem to have shown

The human face is unique yet universal, mechanical yet expressive, modern yet ancient. For over 4 million years, our features have slowly morphed into what we see today in the mirror, a brief stop on the way to who knows what. From early hominins to modern Homo sapiens, a new review written by leading experts

When severe weather threatens, meteorologists use maps to show where storms are located and where they’re headed. They want their audiences to know if they’re in the path of the storm. But research has shown a substantial percentage of people can’t place themselves on a map, a potential problem if a tornado or violent storm

A deep-rooted preference for sons over daughters has skewed the world’s sex ratios more than we thought.  A massive five-year analysis has found that since 1970, sex-selective abortions in a dozen countries have resulted in 23 million ‘missing’ girls. These are women that were never born, and yet today, their absence is palpable, especially in

Two incredible tombs in Egypt have been discovered in such an exceptional state of preservation that even the murals on the walls have retained their dazzling hues. One of the tombs is in the Akhmim necropolis in the province of Sohag – discovered because a gang of tomb robbers carrying out an illegal excavation was

Working on an oil rig, hundreds of kilometres out to sea, things can get a bit lonely. Visitors of any sort are unusual. Those on four legs even more so. Last Friday, workers on a Chevron oil rig in Thailand were shocked to discover a lost dog, swimming in the ocean 220 kilometres from the

Britain was something of a late bloomer as far as the Neolithic Revolution goes. While Europe sweated it out growing crops and dragging stones into circles, communities over the channel were still happily foraging and hunting for food. An analysis of ancient remains by an international team of researchers has filled in missing details on

The “over versus under” toilet paper argument has been waged in bathrooms everywhere since it was first invented. Plenty of space online in the form of polls and listicles has been dedicated to the proper way to orient our toilet paper. The subject even has its own section on Wikipedia filled with arguments for “over”

An archaeological survey in Oxfordshire, England has produced another macabre mystery: 26 ancient skeletons in burial pits, suspected to be around 3,000 years old, dating back to the Iron Age before the Roman occupation of Britain. What makes the find even more intriguing is evidence suggesting the pits were used for ritual burials. The chthonic

In his 89 years of life, Dutch physician Jan Karbaat crowned himself “a pioneer in the field of fertilisation”. Today, his reputation is anything but. Last week, DNA tests confirmed what 49 adults have long suspected. Decades ago, when each of their mothers had sought treatment from Karbaat, the fertility doctor had impregnated them not

In a bid to learn more about the way the human brain develops, scientists in China have added a human brain gene to the genome of rhesus monkeys. It’s called MC HP 1, or microcephalin, and it’s involved in regulating the foetal growth of the brain. The addition does seem to have made the monkeys