News Desk

At the start of the week of the Summer Solstice, many will once again marvel at the magnificent structures built across Ireland thousands of years ago, including Newgrange in Co Meath. The structures were built by the descendants of the first peoples that landed on the island in what is believed to be two migratory waves from around 10,000 years ago.

Incorporating the psychedelic drug psilocybin into psychotherapy shows promise in the treatment of depression, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. But the study also highlights the difficulty of implementing effective blinding procedures to prevent expectancy effects when researching psychedelic substances.

A new study suggests that the use of certain antidepressants, specifically SSRIs and SNRIs, may weaken the acute subjective effects of psilocybin in some individuals. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, indicate that this dampening effect on psilocybin can last for a significant period of time even after stopping the antidepressant medication.

A team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has discovered the earliest known evidence that Native Americans living in present-day central Alaska may have begun freshwater fishing around 13,000 years ago during the last ice age. See the study here.

Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.

When the first Neanderthal skeleton was found in the Neandertal (Neander Valley) in Germany in 1856, scientists imagined the person to have been a dull-witted cave dweller. The German zoologist Ernst Haeckel went so far as to give this first individual the name Homo stupidus.

We are witnessing a resurgence of Indigenous knowledge and growing acknowledgement of its scientific value worldwide…But progress has not been straightforward, with some scientists publicly questioning the scientific value of mātauranga.

Our 3.2 million-year-old ancestor “Lucy” could stand and walk upright just like modern humans do, new 3D muscle modeling reveals. The study was published Wednesday (June 14) in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Just how implicated should humans be in the extinction of these ice-age animals? In a new study, forensic techniques more commonly used to identify blood on objects at crime scenes are used to investigate this question. Our study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In the bowels of a Laotian cave, illuminated by faint sunlight and bright lamps, scientists have unearthed the earliest known evidence of our human ancestors making their way through mainland Southeast Asia en route to Australia some 86,000 years ago…it could push back timelines of early human migration in an area by more than ten thousand years. See the study here.

An international team of researchers who discovered a vast network of stone walls along the River Nile in Egypt and Sudan say these massive “river groins” reveal an exceptionally long-lived form of hydraulic engineering in the Nile Valley, and shed light on connections between ancient Nubia and Egypt. See research here.

Blocking the subjective psychedelic effects of psilocybin does not appear to interfere with the substance’s ability to potentially help with obsessive behaviors, according to new research published in Translational Psychiatry.

A Dutch museum says its archaeologists have been banned from carrying out excavations at a key Egyptian site over an exhibition exploring the influence of ancient Egypt on black musicians.

Claims the US government has secretly retrieved crashed alien spacecraft and their non-human occupants are hardly new…Now, however, journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal have injected fresh vigor into these aging claims – apparently with the Pentagon’s approval.

A team of researchers, including a Virginia Commonwealth University professor, has discovered rare prehistoric instruments made from the bones of birds dating back more than 12,000 years, according to findings published Friday in the journal Scientific Reports