How the languages of the world emerged is largely a mystery. Considering that it might have taken millennia, it is intriguing to see how deaf people can create novel sign languages spontaneously. Observations have shown that when deaf strangers are brought together in a community, they come up with their own sign language in a...
Inaccessible valleys and ravines lead from the North East Indian Meghalaya plateau to the wide plains of Bangladesh. In the monsoon months the mountain streams in the forests swell into torrential rivers. In order to cross these rivers, the indigenous Khasi and Jaintia peoples have long built their bridges out of the living aerial roots...
A study published November 8 in Science focuses on the ancient DNA of individuals from Rome and adjacent regions in Italy, spanning the last 12,000 years. Those genetic data reveal at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years. Notably, DNA analysis revealed...
West Virginia University geographers are linking the political and human rights issues at borders today to the legacies of foreign and domestic policy across the globe since World War I. Karen Culcasi and Cynthia Gorman, of the Department of Geology and Geography in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, have studied more than 100 years of international laws that have...
When the Berlin Wall was completed in August 1961, East German residents immediately tried to figure out ways to circumvent the barrier and escape into West Berlin. By the following summer, NBC and CBS were at work on two separate, secret documentaries on tunnels being dug under the Berlin Wall. The tunnel CBS chose was...
What is the deadliest weapon of the 20th century? Perhaps you think first of the atomic bomb, estimated to have killed as many as 200,000 people when the United States dropped two on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But another weapon is responsible for far more deaths – numbering up into...
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Only 28 European Union nations & 7 others will reduce emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 China & India, top emitters, will reduce emissions intensity, but their emissions will increase U.S., second top emitter, has reversed key national policies to combat climate change Almost 70 percent of the pledges rely on funding from...
There are major gaps in how food waste in tourism is understood and calculated, according to researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Southern California. Food waste originating from hotels, restaurants and events is recognized and can be estimated and calculated, but as the tourism industry is becoming more and more...
A new tool uses an interactive database of geographic and genetic information to help authorities quickly identify where the confiscated tusks of African elephants were originally poached. Developed by an international team of researchers, the Loxodonta Localizer matches genetic sequences from poached ivory to those stored in the database. It relies on genetic information from a small, highly...
For approximately a decade, research has examined whether trauma or poverty is the most powerful influence on children’s cognitive abilities. To address this question, a new study compared adolescents in Jordan–refugees and nonrefugees–to determine what kinds of experiences affected their executive function (the higher-order cognitive skills needed for thinking abstractly, making decisions, and carrying out...
