WILMA!

Homo naledi is primitive in some ways, with a small brain and other physical features reminiscent of our early ancestors. But it also walked upright, and had hands that may have been capable of making tools.
This perplexing combination of features raised questions about when the animal walked the Earth. But in new research published Tuesday in eLife, scientists have come to the conclusion that it lived between 335,000 and 236,000 years ago. That’s only about a tenth of the age some experts previously predicted.
It suggests that this humanlike creature may have lived alongside early humans, or Homo sapiens. “It’s a much more complex picture of human evolution that is rising,” lead author Paul Dirks of James Cook University and the University of Witwatersrand tells The Two-Way.

Forget mysterious dark matter and the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe; the bicycle represents a far more embarrassing hole in the accomplishments of physics. (h/t jcd)
sorry, link fixed!

Hold the consensus.

Consuming fewer than 2,500 milligrams of sodium daily is actually associated with higher blood pressure, according to the Framingham Offspring Study report, given today. The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium daily, equal to a teaspoon of ordinary iodized table salt.
High blood pressure is a known risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Hence, lowering salt intake is supposed to lower blood pressure and thus reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. But the study found that supposition to be unfounded.
Moreover, the lowest blood pressure was recorded by those who consumed 4,000 milligrams or more a day — amounts considered dangerously high by medical authorities such as the American Heart Association.

Scientists say a cache of ancient bones and stones shows ancestral humans reached the New World more than 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Well, maybe.

You’ve probably come across Wansink’s ideas at some point. He researches how subtle changes in the environment can affect people’s eating behavior, and his findings have made a mark on popular diet wisdom. Perhaps you’ve adopted the tip to use smaller plates to trick yourself into eating less, moved your unhealthy snacks into a hard-to-reach place, or placed your fruit bowl prominently on your kitchen counter. Maybe you’ve scoffed at the “health halo” marketing of a decidedly unhealthy food, or chosen 100-calorie snack packs to control your intake.

Well….

Nutritionists, Leslie explains, had decided that dietary fat was the enemy of good health, based in large part on a huge Seven Countries Study, published in 1970, which looked at 12,770 middle-aged men in countries ranging from the U.S. to Yugoslavia.
“The Seven Countries study had become canonical, and the fat hypothesis was enshrined in official advice,” Leslie writes. By 1980, the U.S. government issued its first Dietary Guidelines telling the country to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol, and Americans dutifully complied.
That’s precisely when the nation’s obesity rate started to skyrocket.

Via WUWT;

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years-and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses-apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth’s orbit, and to sea levels-may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes. The findings suggest that models of earth’s natural climate dynamics, and by extension human-influenced climate change, may have to be adjusted. The study appears this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Pure belief tends toward ignoring the obvious points of failure.

The consensus goes tits up: Study shows no long-term cognitive benefit to breastfeeding

An Unexpected New Lung Function Has Been Found…

Why We Were Totally Wrong About How Boa Constrictors Kill. (h/t jcd)

With the benefit of hindsight, the story of the amyloid hypothesis will be written either as one where scientists soldiered on despite setbacks, or one where a wrong idea derailed a field for 25 years. And the field of Alzheimer’s research is no stranger to ideas inflated, abandoned, and sometimes resurrected.

Via

The Vikings – Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared

Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings–numbering 5,000 at their peak–never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived.
That is what archaeologists believed until a few years ago.

Well, it did fit a convenient narrative.

Earth Has a New Continent Called ‘Zealandia’, Study Reveals …

Forget what you’ve learned – scientists just created a stable helium compound