Research into 430,000-year-old fossils collected in northern Spain found that the evolution of the human body's size and shape has gone through four main stages, according to a recent paper. 

A large international research team including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam studied the body size and shape in the human fossil collection from the site of the Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain.

Dated to around 430,000 years ago, this site preserves the largest collection of human fossils found to date anywhere in the world. The researchers found that the Atapuerca individuals were relatively tall, with wide, muscular bodies and less brain mass relative to body mass compared to Neanderthals.

Depressive symptoms and extremes of blood pressure predict the highest rates of harmful vascular events in patients with existing heart disease, diabetes or stroke, according to research presented at ESC Congress by Dr Bhautesh Jani, clinical academic fellow in the Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow. 

The study in more than 35 000 patients found that the risk of further stroke or heart attack, heart failure or dying due to heart disease at four years was 83% higher in depressed patients with high blood pressure and 36% higher in depressed patients with low blood pressure, compared to those with normal blood pressure and no depressive symptoms.

Evidence from the tropical lowlands of Central America reveals how Maya activity more than 2,000 years ago not only contributed to the decline of their environment but continues to influence today's environmental conditions, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Synthesizing old and new data, researchers were the first to show the full extent of the "Mayacene" as a microcosm of the early anthropocene -- a period when human activity began greatly affecting environmental conditions.

Girls with autism display less repetitive and restricted behavior than boys do, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The study also found that brain differences between boys and girls with autism help explain this discrepancy.

The study, which will be published online Sept. 3 in Molecular Autism, gives the best evidence to date that boys and girls exhibit the developmental disorder differently.

Using an inexpensive drug for every hip or knee replacement since 2013 has helped St. Michael's Hospital reduce its number of red blood cell transfusions performed during these surgeries by more than 40 per cent without negatively affecting patients, according to new research.

The drug tranexamic acid, known as TXA, prevents excessive blood loss during surgeries.

TXA had been shown to be effective in orthopedic, trauma and cardiac patients but less than half of eligible patients at St. Michael's received this drug because of a previous province-wide shortage. The drug was given only to patients at high risk of requiring a blood transfusion.

Examination of fossil fragments from Panama has led Smithsonian scientists and colleagues to the discovery of a new genus and species of river dolphin that has been long extinct. The team named it Isthminia panamensis. The specimen not only revealed a new species to science, but also shed new light onto the evolution of today's freshwater river dolphin species.