Research

When bones of a new human species were found deep in a South Africa cave a few years ago, they looked 2 million years old. But scientists recently made a startling discovery — the bones were much younger, between 226,000 and 335,000 years old. That means the newly found species, dubbed Homo naledi, roamed the landscape at the same time as ancient humans.

Deep within the Rising Star Cave system in South Africa, archaeologists have discovered the remains of at least three Hominin naledi. The age of the remains has been revealed to be startlingly young, suggesting the species was alive sometime between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago.

Using radioactive elements trapped in crystallized, cream-colored “veins” in New Mexican rock, geologists have peered back in time more than 400,000 years to illuminate a record of earthquakes along the Loma Blanca fault in the Rio Grande rift. The work was led by postdoctoral researcher Randy Williams and his advisor, Laurel Goodwin, a professor in the geoscience department.

An analysis just published online has broken new ground by finding gender differences in both symptoms and diagnoses of depression appearing at age 12. The analysis, based on existing studies that looked at more than 3.5 million people in more than 90 countries, confirmed that depression affects far more females than males.

The goal of UW2020 is to stimulate and support cutting edge, highly innovative and groundbreaking research at UW–Madison and the acquisition of shared instruments or equipment that will open new avenues for innovative and significant research.

Like a lot of pioneering science, the Wisconsin H-Alpha Mapper (WHAM) got its start as the shoestring project of a curious young researcher. Sawing a hole in the ceiling of an office at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Physical Sciences Laboratory in the late 1970s, astrophysicist Ron Reynolds pointed a specially built spectrometer skyward for the first time and discovered a previously unknown feature of the Milky Way.

Road salt is making North America’s freshwater lakes saltier, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Most of the lakes tested (284) are in the North American Lakes Region. The study represents the first large-scale analysis of chloride trends in freshwater lakes.

Despite the internet-dependent nature of our world, a thorough understanding of the internet’s physical makeup has only recently emerged, thanks to painstaking work by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers and their collaborators. Professor of Computer Sciences Paul Barford, Ph.D. candidate Ramakrishnan (Ram) Durairajan and colleagues have developed Internet Atlas, the first detailed map of the internet’s structure worldwide.

On a lab benchtop, a handful of glass vials taped to a rocker gently sway back and forth. Inside the vials, a mixture of organic chemicals and tiny particles of fool’s gold are begging a question seemingly beyond their humble appearance: Where did life come from?