The modern human face is distinctively different to that of our near relatives and now researchers believe its evolution may have been partly driven by our need for good social skills. | Continue reading
When the "nudge" first appeared on the policymaking scene, it struck many as an ideal tool. Unlike traditional interventions aiming to improve people's behavior, a nudge is low-cost, non-coercive, and less likely to have unintended consequences. More than a decade later, though, … | Continue reading
Scientists from the University of Groningen have succeeded in incorporating a light-controlled switch into a molecule used by bacteria for quorum sensing—a process by which bacteria communicate and subsequently control cellular processes. With the molecule described, it is possib … | Continue reading
Americans rely on the Environmental Protection Agency to set pollution control standards that protect their health. But on April 11, an important scientific advisory group submitted recommendations to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler that propose new and dangerous ways of interpr … | Continue reading
Subtle, hidden and everyday acts of resistance and defiance by people with limited resources could have an impact on markets in societies where state and religion is all-powerful. | Continue reading
It might be one of nature's most agile and calculating hunters, but the wolf spider won't harm an insect that literally leaves a bad taste in its mouth, according to new research by a team of Wake Forest University sensory neuroscientists, including C.J. "Jake" Saunders. | Continue reading
Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) discovered a new method to passivate defects in next generation optical materials to improve optical quality and enable the miniaturization of light emitting diodes and other optical elements. | Continue reading
Economic thinking governs much of our world. But the discipline's teaching is stuck in the past. Centred around antiquated 19th-century models built on Newtonian physics, economics treats humans as atomic particles, rather than as social beings. | Continue reading
Accurate weather prediction depends on a fundamental understanding of storm dynamics and cloud microphysics and their representation in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, as well the optimal use of high-resolution multi-parameter measurements, according to Professor Guifu … | Continue reading
Governments keen to raise levels of educational attainment need to look at the cultures and attitudes of parents in high-achieving countries, not just national education systems – according to new findings from researchers at the University of Warwick and the Bank of Italy. | Continue reading
A shocking report has found that the majority of ethnic minority workers have experienced racial harassment at work in the last five years, and have been subjected to unfair treatment by their employer because of their race. | Continue reading
The Egg Nebula is a preplanetary nebula, created by a dying star in the process of becoming a planetary nebula. Planetary nebulas have nothing to do with planets – the name arose when 18th century astronomers spotted them in their telescopes and thought they looked like planets. … | Continue reading
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers have identified a novel protein that plays a crucial role in the formation of the mitotic spindle, which is essential for correct segregation of a full set of chromosomes to each daughter cell during cell division. | Continue reading
A team of scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München and the University of Ulm has discovered that the neuronal transport factor Staufen2 scans and binds to its target transcripts in a much more complex manner than previously thought. RNA is transported within highly complex prote … | Continue reading
The study in beetles is the first to link an animal's nutritional intake during sexual development with its adult breeding habits. | Continue reading
Many bird populations are crashing, largely because they migrate such long distances and are at risk from human influence at every link in their migratory chain. | Continue reading
German prosecutors said Monday they had charged former Volkswagen chief executive Martin Winterkorn and four other managers over the group's "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal. | Continue reading
About one fourth of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They're thawing at an increasing rate. | Continue reading
Scientists have dedicated intense work in recent years to convert environmental energy into electricity to meet the ongoing demands for a cleaner and more sustainable power source. Harvesting environmental mechanical energy as an eco-friendly method is a promising solution and pl … | Continue reading
I have been popularising quantum physics, my area of research, for many years now. The general public finds the topic fascinating and covers of books and magazines often draw on its mystery. A number of misconceptions have arisen in this area of physics and my purpose here is to … | Continue reading
A team of researchers with members from Nankai University in China and Rice University in the U.S. has developed a type of foam that retains its squishiness when exposed to extremely cold temperatures. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes … | Continue reading
Engineered T cell immunotherapy, such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) and T cell receptor T cell (TCR-T) therapy, has emerged as a potent therapeutic strategy for treating tumors. | Continue reading
A collaboration led by ICIQ's Palomares group deepens the understanding of the impact that changing the materials in a perovskite solar cell has on its performance. The results, published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy & Environmental Science will inform the design of the co … | Continue reading
In a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Dr. Özdemir has studied two protein families named Rho GTPases and IQGAPs, which are known to play an important role in cancer metastasis. These two "suspicious" protein families have been studied by many researchers ov … | Continue reading
A Harvard physicist has shown that wormholes can exist: tunnels in curved space-time, connecting two distant places, through which travel is possible. | Continue reading
A University of Manchester historian is to study the influence of Erle Stanley Gardner, creator of renowned TV attorney Perry Mason, in a bid to reveal the roots of the fascination with stories about wrongful criminal conviction. | Continue reading
A research team at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology has developed a method to construct a biohybrid system that incorporates Vorticella microorganisms. The method allows movable structures to be formed in a microchannel and combined w … | Continue reading
The negative effects of social media and a hectic news cycle on our attention span has been an ongoing discussion in recent years—but there's been a lack of empirical data supporting claims of a 'social acceleration.' A new study in Nature Communications finds that our collective … | Continue reading
Countries relying on the world's biggest and most established source of renewable electricity have seen their poverty, corruption and debt levels rise and their economy slow at significantly greater rates than nations which use other energy resources over the last three decades, … | Continue reading