The first largescale study of ancient DNA from early American people has confirmed the devastating impact of European colonisation on the Indigenous American populations of the time.

Led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD), the researchers have reconstructed a genetic history of Indigenous American populations by looking directly into the DNA of 92 pre-Columbian mummies and skeletons, between 500 and 8600 years old.

Published today in Science Advances, the study reveals a striking absence of the pre-Columbian genetic lineages in modern Indigenous Americans; showing extinction of these lineages with the arrival of the Spaniards.

PULLMAN, Wash.--The heavily studied yet largely unexplained disappearance of ancestral Pueblo people from southwest Colorado is "the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology," according to the New York Times.

But it's not all that unique, say Washington State University scientists. Writing in the journal Science Advances, they say the region saw three other cultural transitions over the preceding five centuries. The researchers also document recurring narratives in which the Pueblo people agreed on canons of ritual, behavior and belief that quickly dissolved as climate change hurt crops and precipitated social turmoil and violence.

Using reprogrammed iPS cells, scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Japan have, along with collaborators from Tokyo University of Science and other Japanese institutions, successfully grown complex skin tissue--complete with hair follicles and sebaceous glands--in the laboratory. They were then able to implant these three-dimensional tissues into living mice, and the tissues formed proper connections with other organ systems such as nerves and muscle fibers. This work opens a path to creating functional skin transplants for burn and other patients who require new skin.

Scientists at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Zurich have developed a new technique that enables for the first time the manufacture of complexly structured tiny objects joining together microspheres. The objects have a size of just a few micrometres and are produced in a modular fashion, making it possible to program their design in such a way that each component exhibits different physical properties. After fabrication, it is also very simple to bring the micro-objects into solution. This makes the new technique substantially different from micro 3D printing technology. With most of today's micro 3D printing technologies, objects can only be manufactured if they consist of a single material, have a uniform structure and are attached to a surface during production.

The number of science and engineering graduate students at U.S. academic institutions rose by 3 percent between 2013 and 2014, owing largely to a 13.1 percent increase in foreign graduate enrollment.

According to a new report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, (NCSES) in 2014 a total of 587,161 students were enrolled in masters' or doctorate programs in science and engineering (S&E), up from a comparable number of 570,300 the previous year.

There was also an influx of nearly 25,000 additional S&E graduate students on temporary visas over the same period, bringing foreign enrollment to 213,783.

Boston, MA-- Among military veterans identifying as transgender, 90 percent have at least one mental health diagnosis, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, and nearly 50 percent had a hospitalization after a suicide attempt or suicidal thoughts. These study findings, from a single veterans' hospital, will be presented Friday at The Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.

"As more of our active military returns from deployment and transitions to veteran status, the health care system will be faced with treating more transgender veterans who have mental health issues," said principal investigator Marissa Grotzke, MD, an endocrinologist at Salt Lake City Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), Salt Lake City.

Despite the hype, there’s still no bee-pocalypse. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department Agriculture released its latest count of commercial honeybee hives, and although the figure dipped 2.9 percent from the 20-year record-high set in 2014, the overall count of 2.7 million hives in 2015 remains strong. You wouldn’t know it from the news coverage.

ThinkProgress has found a way to use the tragedy of the Zika outbreak to advance their political agenda. America is one of two developed countries that allow abortion on demand at any stage for any reason (Canada is the other one) and the lack of a national policy has led to varying restrictions on that within the states.

When athletes gets their bell rung on the field or court, there's often tension between their desire to keep playing and a trainer's responsibility to prevent them from further harming themselves. The problem with standard on-field concussion protocols--including the one most recently used by the National Football League--is that several of their components are subjective and prone to human error.

New findings from large-scale studies of more than 3.6 million people who underwent screening for cardiovascular disease reveals that a person's age and gender affects the prevalence of certain types of peripheral vascular diseases (PVD), and that diabetes is a major risk factor for developing these diseases, even in patients without heart disease.

As the U.S. population ages, more people are developing PVD, a common condition that affects the blood vessels. Up until now, there has been a lack of research to identify exactly which populations are at greatest risk for PVD, which can lead to heart attack, stroke and even amputation of the limbs.