In southwestern Kenya more than 2.6 million years ago, ancient humans wielded an array of stone tools—known collectively as the Oldowan toolkit—to pound plant material and carve up large prey such as hippopotamuses. These durable and versatile tools were crafted from special stone materials collected up to eight miles away, according to new research led by scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Queens College. Their findings, published Aug. 15 in the journal Science Advances, push back the earliest known evidence of ancient humans transporting resources over long distances by some 600,000 years.

A University of Vermont physicist and his student wondered if there are systems in the atomic scale that behave like the vibrating motion of a guitar string in the Newtonian world. They found that the answer is yes—and solved Lamb's Model at the atomic scale—a 90-year-old problem in quantum physics. 

In a new paper in the journal Science, researchers propose policies that would reward farmers for adopting “climate-smart” practices when growing biofuel crops and remove the hurdles that currently thwart such efforts. This could aid efforts to decarbonize agricultural as a whole, the scientists say.