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Daily briefing: Ancient cave art found hiding in plain sight
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Inscriptions at the Cova de la Font Major cave system in Catalonia in northeastern Spain prompts rethink of prehistoric population and cultural trends. Credit: Vergès Bosch, J. M., Salas-Altès, M./Antiquity
Archaeologists have described hundreds of rock-art engravings dating back more than 25,000 years in a cave frequently visited by tourists in Catalonia — a region of northeastern Spain that was thought to be almost devoid of palaeolithic art. The cave system has been open to the public for decades and became a museum in the 1990s, but these motifs were missed because they “are really difficult to see”, says archaeologist and study co-author Míriam Salas-Altès. “You have to play with light from different directions to see the depressions.”
The temperature to which scientists have cooled a cloud of rubidium atoms in an experiment on China’s Tiangong space station — the coldest ever attained experimentally. (Science | 5 min read)
Flexible working policies in academia, intended to make life easier, are having the opposite impact for many women. A survey of more than 10,000 academics with children found that women were more likely to do most of the parenting. That was partly because women used flexible hours to take on more caring responsibilities, whereas men in academic couples relied on their female partner to do the flexing.
Reference: Gender, Work & Organization paper & European Journal of Higher Education paper
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which gathered valuable data on cosmic explosions, has been destroyed by a fiery fall into Earth’s atmosphere. In August, NASA partnered with a private company to attempt a first-of-its-kind rescue mission to boost Swift back into orbit, but the LINK spacecraft wasn’t able to grab on.
A farmer receives an unsatisfying answer to a burning question in The oracle of the second quadrant.
Andrew Robinson’s pick of five science books to read this week includes an exquisitely illustrated survey of plants with medical properties, an engrossing history of smell and an argument for the reality of time’s arrow.