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Three pandemics coincided with cooler, drier periods in the climate of Italy during antiquity. Plus: looking after the fungi in your gut could be key to better health

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The Walters Art Museum/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Ancient pandemics

Three pandemics in the Roman Empire coincided with abnormally cold and dry periods, suggesting that natural changes in climate may have contributed to Rome’s decline. Kyle Harper at the University of Oklahoma and his colleagues reconstructed the climate of southern Italy between 200 BC and AD 600 by analysing the remains of plankton in a sediment core from the Adriatic Sea. “The Roman Empire rises and falls and rises and falls,” says Harper. “There’s a series of episodes of very extreme crises in some cases. And I think the case is now overwhelmingly clear that both climate change and pandemic disease had a role in many of those episodes.” Read more

Growing meat

Researchers have engineered cows’ muscle cells that can multiply in the lab without the assistance of growth factors, an expensive and energy-intensive ingredient used in the production of cultivated meat. Growth factors latch onto receptors on the surface of animal cells and tell them to grow and differentiate. Currently, these make up around 90 per cent of the cost of lab-grown meat production. Andrew Stout at Tufts University in Massachusetts and his colleagues engineered cow muscle cells containing genes with instructions for making their own growth factors. Read more

The breathtaking advances in artificial intelligence and a growing urgency to find climate change solutions are set to dominate headlines in 2024. Stay ahead with New Scientist for just $1.50 a week and let us guide you through the coming year. 

More headlines

• Biohybrid robot: A tiny, bipedal robot that combines muscle tissue with artificial materials can walk and turn by contracting its muscles.

• Musical brain: Learning to play the piano causes complex changes in brain activity that shift over time.

• Memory aid: Writing something down rather than typing it on a computer could help you retain the information better.

Alexey Kotelnikov/Alamy

You've heard of your microbiome - now it's time to give some thought to your mycobiome - the fungi that reside in your gut. Long overlooked, researchers are now realising that gut fungi can significantly affect your health - with tentative links to chronic diseases and even cancer. It might even be possible to manipulate them through diet to benefit our health and wellbeing. Read more

Total Solar Eclipse 2024: San Antonio to San Marcos, Texas: USA

6 April 2024 | 7 days 

This once-in-a-lifetime tour offers you the opportunity to deepen your understanding of the universe and witness one of nature's most magnificent events, a rare total eclipse of the sun taking place across north and central America on 8 April 2024.

Can you use science to help us answer our readers' questions? The best answers will be published in our Last Word section. This week we ask:

Why aren’t humans covered in hair like other primates are?

Thanks for reading!

Sam Wong

Assistant news editor, New Scientist
Email me at newsletter@newscientist.com

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