Though humans did not exist 400,000 years ago, human ancestors did - and they left behind engravings on a fossilized shell from Java, establishing a new benchmark for the earliest known example of ancient humans deliberately creating pattern.

The newly discovered engravings resemble the previously oldest-known engravings, which are associated with either Neanderthals or modern humans from around 100,000 years ago.  The zig-zag pattern engravings were only recently discovered on the fossilized mussel shells, which had been collected 100 years ago. There is no way to know if the pattern was intended as art or served some practical purpose.  

At UN climate change negotiations, human rights is increasingly the focus. 350.org, CC BY-NC

By Matthew Nisbet, 
Northeastern University

Senior officials representing nearly 200 countries will gather in Lima, Peru today for the final stages of United Nations-led climate change talks. The meetings, which began December 1, are intended to lay the final groundwork for a major international agreement to be reached a year from now in Paris, France.

When looked at the right way, even cement can be beautiful. This is the crystal structure of tricalcium aluminate, a vital mineral in cement.

By Helen Maynard-Casely, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Epigenetics has gotten new life 200 years after it was first postulated - it is temporary biochemical changes in the genome, caused by various forms of environmental impact that can be permanent and even passed down to future generations, basically an update on Jean Baptiste Lamarck's inheritance of acquired characteristics. 

One type of epigenetic change is methylation, where a methyl group is added to or removed from a base in the DNA molecule without affecting the original DNA sequence. Epigenetic researchers liken it to computers: If genes are considered the hardware of cells, then epigenetics can be seen as their software. 

A small study

A Parkinson's disease vaccine developed by the Austrian biotech company AFFiRiS AG is going into a Phase I trial clinical trial.

The vaccine,  called AFFITOPE® PD03A , targets a protein called alpha-Synuclein. The protein plays a key role in the onset and progression of Parkinson's as well as multiple system atrophy (MSA), an orphan disease. This vaccine has the potential to modify disease progression, rather than only symptomatic improvements available with current treatment strategies.

How do drug prices get picked? Some of it is simple economics. If you develop 20 drugs and 19 of them fail at various stages and one succeeds after a billion dollars in costs and bureaucracy, you are going to price it to make back all that lost money before generic companies are allowed to come along and sell your product without doing any work at all.

An analysis of U.C. Berkeley students has concluded that inflated or deflated feelings of self-worth are linked to afflictions like bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, anxiety and depression - more evidence that the widening gulf between rich and poor can be bad for your health, say the psychologists who conducted the survey. 

Titan is Saturn's largest moon and the only planetary body outside Venus, Earth and Mars to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface.

Government and non-profit employees have higher public service motivations than corporate managers, according to surveys of government and non-profit employees in Georgia.

They don't simply do the minimum when it comes to eco-friendly initiatives, they also engage in discretionary programs. They just care more than other people, which is a nice bonus, since it is well-known that government workers have higher salaries than the private sector in the United States. It is why if they leave government service, they often take years to get back to their government salary levels.

The results in the American Review of Public Administration are based on a survey of hundreds of public servants about their environmental and organizational behaviors. 

You don't have to be a jerk to get the right thing done but sometimes out-of-the-box thinking requires some angry evangelism. Yet even legendary jerks like
Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison
knew you can't use the belligerence strategy too often or the next brilliant idea you have could fall on deaf ears.

Samuel Hunter of Pennsylvania State University and Lily Cushenbery of Stony Brook University, writing in the Journal of Business and Psychology, say jerks that are disagreeable by nature, overly confident, dominant, argumentative, egotistic, headstrong or sometimes even hostile are lauded, like Jobs, if they are innovative and succeed and happen to be CEO of the company, but for most people it can backfire.