Fear of punishment and conformity might explain how traditions are created and mantained
The threat of punishment and humans' seemingly innate tendency to copy other behaviors form the basis of a psychological model...
Smartphones used as sensors for earthquake early warnings
There's so much you can do with a smartphone today - much more than just browsing the web or social...
Why the Dutch are the tallest on the planet: sexual selection
European males are on average 11 centimeters taller now than they were in the 1870s, which is quite a lot...
The neurological condition that makes Hodor keep Hodoring
"Hodor. Hodor, hodor; hodor hodor... hodor" said Hodor.
Kid doesn’t like going to school? Your ‘bad’ genes might have a say in all this
Some kids seem to enjoy school activities more than others, but while efforts seem to be concentrated on improving teaching,...
The sun goes through quasi-seasonal changes, a find that could help protect power grids back on Earth
Just like our own planet, the sun goes through seasonal changes in its activity, waxing and waning over the course...
Shorter people are more likely to get heart disease – every inch counts
The same genes that are responsible for height have been linked to heart disease as well, according to British researchers...
New Aluminum-ion battery fully charges in under a minute – 100 times faster than your laptop
Renewable energy and electric vehicles not only need high density storage mediums to become successful, but ones that can be...
Presenting the first brain-gene interface: thought-controlled protein production
You've heard all about controlling robotic arms or prosthesis with thoughts, but what about genes? In a deceptively simple experiment,...
The ultimate bandaid: synthetic spider silk
There aren't blood vessels you're seeing, but itsy bitsy strands of artificial spider silk. For some years, researchers have been...
Map compiled by NASA shows how lightning strikes the Earth
By the time you've finished reading this sentence, thousands of lightning bolts had already discharged enormous amounts of energy onto...
Blind rats ‘sense’ their location after a geomagnetic compass was strapped to their brains
Blind rats learned to navigate mazes just as well as those that could see, after scientists strapped a simple geomagnetic...
City ants LOVE junk food
If you ever dropped food on the pavement, don't feel too bad. It'll get scrapped bit by bit by the...
Frustrated magnets really do exhibit Hall’s effect, but only near absolute zero temperature
Settling a long debate, Princeton University researchers found that a class of materials called frustrated magnets - called so because...
Book review: ‘Higher Education in the Digital Age’
Higher education is facing a crisis, and professor Bowen offers some solutions.
What overpopulation looks like, in PHOTOS
Sprawling Mexico City rolls across the landscape, displacing every scrap of natural habitat . Photograph: Pablo Lopez Luz Some might...
Homes cleaned with bleach linked to higher rate of infection in children
Homes cleaned at least once a week with bleach might provide an environment that puts children at a higher risk...
Biotech used to build plant tolerance to water shortage – one way to beat California’s worst drought in history
Exploiting plants' natural response to stress caused by drought, researchers have engineered crops that build tolerance and can withstand longer...
DNA blood test can detect Down Syndrome more accurately than standard tests
A new test analyzes the free DNA inside the blood of pregnant women to detect Down Syndrome in fetuses with...
Over 100 child paralysis cases linked to new Enterovirus strain
Most of the 100 children hospitalized with acute flaccid myelitis haven't recovered from paralysis and weak limbs. CC BY-NC 2.0
As Arctic ice goes, so do the polar bears. Study finds land food is inadequate to keep them fed
After carefully calculating the net nutritional gain polar bears have from land-based food like caribou, berries or bird eggs, researchers...
Awesome tiny birds cross the Atlantic in one go without stopping
More than half a century in question, scientists now confirm that the tiny blackpoll warbler flies nonstop over the North...
Ignoring the dress code can actually enhance status, but only if other people think you’re elite
There's a fine line between being seen as a non-conformist (higher status) and sloppy dresser (lower status). But what sets...
Book review: ‘On Sacrifice’
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the biblical sacrifice, but also the psychoanalytical reasoning behind sacrifice. Quite...
The Colugo (flying lemur): the cutest mammalian glider
The flying lemur is the most accomplished mammalian glider.
Sandwiching water between graphene makes square ice crystals at room temperature
In a most unexpected find, the same University of Manchester team that isolated graphene for the first time in 2003...
First 3D mini lungs grow in the lab help end animal testing
Stem cells were coaxed to grow into 3D dimensional mini lungs, or organoids, for the first time. These survived for...
How a new generation of climate change resistant beans could save millions
Some 30 new bean varieties have been cross-bred by researchers in order to make these more resistant to rising temperatures....
50 years ago today, an astronaut smuggled the first sandwich to space
When you gotta eat... well you gotta eat, even in space. On March 23, 1965 astronaut John Young launched to...
Boeing develops force field reminiscent of Star Trek
Boeing, a major aircraft and military manufacturer, just secured a patent that describes a Star Trek-like force shield, meant to...
Humidity-powered seed drills itself in the ground
The Stork’s Bill (Erodium circutarium) is a incredible plant which evolved its own seed drilling mechanism. The vitamin K rich seeds have little...
Parents’ second-hand smoke might clog children’s arteries
A longitudinal study that spanned 26 years found that kids exposed to their Finish parents cigarette smoke are at risk...
Kept in the dark: half of Alzheimer’s diagnoses aren’t disclosed by doctors
For its annual report, the The Alzheimer’s Association in the US claims that more than half of all reported early...
Why insulin is so prohibitively expensive to the 29 million diabetes patients in the US
Even if it was first discovered more than 90 years ago, insulin is still out of reach for a shocking...
Woolly mammoth and modern elephant DNA merged. Next, cloning
Cloning the woolly mammoth is a life long dream for many geneticists and biologists, but the challenges are numerous. Now,...
You’re flushing a goldmine down the toilet, literally
At a recent meeting of the of the American Chemical Society, researchers proposed a novel source of valuable metals: waste...
Bioelectricity vital to brain and tissue development, tadpole experiment shows
Biologists at Tufts Universityand University of Minnesota showed for the first time that bioelectricity signaling between cells guides embryonic brain...
Every year, spring is 30 seconds shorter
Spring officially began in the northern hemisphere Friday on 22:45 GMT, around 30 seconds later than last year. As it...
Book review: ‘The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis’
The 2008 financial crisis explained by the Federal Reserve chairman.
Darwin’s ‘strangest animals’ finally classified thanks to protein sequencing
While in South American during his 1830 expedition with the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin came across the fossils of two...
Florida employee forced to leave of absence and called a ‘nut’ for mentioning ‘climate change’
Barton Bibler, a long time employee of Florida's environmental protection department, was forced by his boss to take a leave...
Croc ancestor was the top two-legged predator on Earth, long before T. Rex and other dinosaurs
Long before T-rex claimed the top dog spot among terrestrial predators, a vicious crocodile ancestor that walked on its hind...
Why some tropical mushrooms glow in the dark
The tropical forests of Northeaster Brazil have their own nightlight: a peculiar mushroom called Neonothopanus gardneri that glows in the...
Q&A with Dr. Ijad Madisch (ResearchGate founder)
Ijad Madisch a Harvard trained virologist and computer scientist was on his way to becoming a medical professor, but in...
Cannabis under the microscope: up close and personal
Scientists, in the lab at least, see marijuana differently from growers or users. Like other plants, once you dive into...
Workplace suicides on the rise – doctors, law enforcement workers and soldiers most vulnerable
Each year worldwide about one million people decide to take their own lives. Overriding your conservation instincts isn't easy, let's...
Buzz Aldrin in Stonehenge photoshoot: ‘Get your a** to Mars’
Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, is no stranger to staggering photos. His most famous shot includes the...
Unsatisfied by their government’s apathy, Canadian scientists propose their own climate policy
The conservative Canadian government headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper has consistently moved the country away from sustainable practices and...
Strongest geomagnetic storm this solar cycle sparks dazzling Northern Lights
A pair of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) emitted by the sun last Sunday have now triggered a severe geomagnetic storm...
Book review: ‘The Quantum Moment’
How the quantum moment "overturned basic beliefs about space and time, causality and reality, and exposed as mistaken many fundamental...