A new analysis of stone tools in northeastern China's Nihewan Basin indicates that human ancestors lived there about 1.36 million years ago, making it the oldest confirmed occupation site in eastern Asia.

Homo erectus groups that entered northeastern Asia from more southerly locales learned to handle the region's intermittent periods of drought and intense cold that characterized the Stone Age, concludes a team led by geologist Rixiang X. Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . For decades cognitive scientists knew people could remember lots of images stretching back decades. But researchers at MIT found that human memory is much more powerful than that. http://louis4j4sheehan4esquire.wordpress.com

In January, cognitive scientist Aude Oliva’s team set up a refined reworking of a 1970s experiment: Over four hours researchers showed 14 people nearly 3,000 images (at three seconds per image) and then immediately asked the subjects

Discovered around 1900 in the wreckage of an ancient Roman merchant vessel at the bottom of the Mediterranean, the Antikythera mechanism is a confusing tangle of clockwork gears. Only when probed with sophisticated 3-D X-ray technology did the device begin to disclose many of its secrets, more than 100 years later. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

In an article published in Nature [subscription required] in July, an international team argues that the object comprises a calendar dedicated to