It was recently reported that men self-cite >50% more often than women across a wide variety of disciplines in the bibliographic database JSTOR. Here, we replicate this finding in a sample of 1.6 million papers from Author-ity, a version of PubMed with computationally disambiguat … | Continue reading
Recent archaeological investigations in Sri Lanka have reported evidence for the exploitation and settlement of tropical rainforests by Homo sapiens since c. 48,000 BP. Information on technological approaches used by human populations in rainforest habitats is restricted to two c … | Continue reading
Previous research suggests that dogs can detect when humans are experiencing stress. This study tested whether baseline and stress odours were distinguishable to dogs, using a double-blind, two-phase, three-alternative forced-choice procedure. Combined breath and sweat samples we … | Continue reading
Removal or protection from biostratinomic agents of decomposition, such as predators and scavengers, is widely seen as a requirement for high-quality preservation of soft tissues in the fossil record. In this context, extremely rapid burial is an oft-cited mechanism for shielding … | Continue reading
Author summary SARS-CoV-2, the sarbecovirus behind COVID-19, emerged in the human population after cross-species transmission from an animal source. While hundreds of sarbecoviruses have been discovered, predominantly in bats in Asia, the majority are not capable of infecting hum … | Continue reading
Objectives Emergency department (ED) health care personnel (HCP) are at risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2. The objective of this study was to determine the attributable risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection from providing ED care, describe personal protective equipment use, and identify modi … | Continue reading
The COVID-19 pandemic upended how many Americans acquire foods. In this paper, we analyze eight food acquisition activities at different points in the pandemic, which allows us to evaluate how food acquisition changed as case rates changed and vaccine rollouts occurred. We collec … | Continue reading
In humans, naturally acquired microchimerism has been observed in many tissues and organs. Fetal microchimerism, however, has not been investigated in the human brain. Microchimerism of fetal as well as maternal origin has recently been reported in the mouse brain. In this study, … | Continue reading
Author summary Even in favorable circumstances, we often find it hard to remain happy with what we have. One might enjoy a newly bought car for a season, but over time it brings fewer positive feelings and one eventually begins dreaming of the next rewarding thing to pursue. Here … | Continue reading
Author summary The current state-of-the-art lacks physiology-motivated models for electrodermal activities (EDA) that have the power to comprehensively describe the variations in skin conductance (SC)–a measure of EDA. In this study, we propose a physiology-motivated state-space … | Continue reading
Music is increasingly being recognised as an adjuvant treatment for pain management. Music can help to decrease the experience of both chronic and experimental pain. Cognitive agency has been identified as a specific mechanism that may mediate the analgesic benefits of music enga … | Continue reading
Counting is not always a simple exercise. Specimens can be misidentified or not detected when they are present, giving rise to unidentified sources of error. Deer pellet group counts are a common method to monitor abundance, density, and population trend. Yet, detection errors an … | Continue reading
Election forecasting has been traditionally dominated by subjective surveys and polls or methods centered upon them. We have developed a novel platform for forecasting elections based on agent-based modeling (ABM), which is entirely independent from surveys and polls. The platfor … | Continue reading
The public is convinced that beliefs in conspiracy theories are increasing, and many scholars, journalists, and policymakers agree. Given the associations between conspiracy theories and many non-normative tendencies, lawmakers have called for policies to address these increases. … | Continue reading
Hibernating bears remain in their dens for 5–7 months during winter and survive without eating or drinking while staying inactive. However, they maintain their physical functions with minimal skeletal muscle atrophy and metabolic dysfunction. In bears, resistance to skeletal musc … | Continue reading
Anya Topiwala and colleagues investigate the observational and genetic associations of alcohol intake with measures of iron levels in the brain and liver, and cognitive function among UK Biobank participants. | Continue reading
The colloquial term “hangry” refers to the notion that people become angry when hungry, but very little research has directly determined the extent to which the relationship between hunger and negative emotions is robust. Here, we examined associations between everyday experience … | Continue reading
Clickbait to make people click on a linked article is commonly used on social media. We analyze the impact of clickbait on user interaction on Facebook in the form of liking, sharing and commenting. For this, we use a data set of more than 4,400 Facebook posts from 10 different n … | Continue reading
Understanding the factors that determine if a person can successfully learn a novel sensory skill is essential for understanding how the brain adapts to change, and for providing rehabilitative support for people with sensory loss. We report a training study investigating the eff … | Continue reading
Background Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, testing individuals remains a key action. One approach to rapid testing is to consider the olfactory capacities of trained detection dogs. Methods Prospective cohort study in two community COVID-19 screening centers. Two nasopharynge … | Continue reading
Background Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, testing individuals remains a key action. One approach to rapid testing is to consider the olfactory capacities of trained detection dogs. Methods Prospective cohort study in two community COVID-19 screening centers. Two nasopharynge … | Continue reading
The archaeological site of Salorno—Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated t … | Continue reading
The language used in online discussions affects who participates in them and how they respond, which can influence perceptions of public opinion. This study examines how the term white privilege affects these dimensions of online communication. In two lab experiments, US resident … | Continue reading
There are few commonly used indicators that describe the state of Earth’s global hydrological cycle and here we propose three indicators to capture how an increased greenhouse effect influences the global hydrological cycle and the associated rainfall patterns. They are: i) the 2 … | Continue reading
Background Research into paranormal beliefs and cognitive functioning has expanded considerably since the last review almost 30 years ago, prompting the need for a comprehensive review. The current systematic review aims to identify the reported associations between paranormal be … | Continue reading
Medical journals have become dependent on the pharmaceutical industry for their survival, which can have a corrupting influence on their content, argues Smith, the former editor of the BMJ. | Continue reading
Background Despite the empirical literature demonstrating the efficacy of antidepressant medications for treatment of depression disorder, these medications’ effect on patients’ overall well-being and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) remains controversial. This study invest … | Continue reading
Humans perceive light in the visible spectrum (400-700 nm). Some night vision systems use infrared light that is not perceptible to humans and the images rendered are transposed to a digital display presenting a monochromatic image in the visible spectrum. We sought to develop an … | Continue reading
In this paper we estimate the minimum prevalence of grapheme-color synesthetes with letter-color matches learned from an external stimulus, by analyzing a large sample of English-speaking grapheme-color synesthetes. We find that at least 6% (400/6588 participants) of the total sa … | Continue reading
The relationship between nature contact and mental well-being has received increasing attention in recent years. While a body of evidence has accumulated demonstrating a positive relationship between time in nature and mental well-being, there have been few studies comparing this … | Continue reading
Shanquan Chen and colleagues investigate the association between lithium use and the incidence of dementia and its subtypes. | Continue reading
Background Severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent and debilitating condition in the United States. and globally. Using pooled efficacy data from six phase 2 trials, therapy using 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) appeared cost-saving from a payer’s pers … | Continue reading
Early stone tools, and in particular sharp stone tools, arguably represent one of the most important technological milestones in human evolution. The production and use of sharp stone tools significantly widened the ecological niche of our ancestors, allowing them to exploit nove … | Continue reading
Author summary Over a quarter of the world population is subjected to the daylight saving time (DST) shift twice a year, which disrupts both human work and rest schedules and possibly the body’s biological clock. Several clinical studies have reported an increased risk of cerebro … | Continue reading
Objective Studies have demonstrated a potential correlation between low vitamin D status and both an increased risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and poorer clinical outcomes. This retrospective study examines if, and to what degree, a relationship exists between pre-infection ser … | Continue reading
Mathematical models have come to play a key role in global pandemic preparedness and outbreak response: helping to plan for disease burden, hospital capacity, and inform nonpharmaceutical interventions. Such models have played a pivotal role in the COVID-19 pandemic, with transmi … | Continue reading
Ocean acidification—decreasing oceanic pH resulting from the uptake of excess atmospheric CO2—has the potential to affect marine life in the future. Among the possible consequences, a series of studies on coral reef fish suggested that the direct effects of acidification on fish … | Continue reading
A word like Huh?–used as a repair initiator when, for example, one has not clearly heard what someone just said– is found in roughly the same form and function in spoken languages across the globe. We investigate it in naturally occurring conversations in ten languages and presen … | Continue reading
Lars Fadnes and co-workers estimate the possible benefits to life expectancy from adoption of more healthy diets. | Continue reading
Animal agriculture contributes significantly to global warming through ongoing emissions of the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, and displacement of biomass carbon on the land used to support livestock. However, because estimates of the magnitude of the effect o … | Continue reading
Rising political polarization in recent decades has hampered and gridlocked policymaking, as well as weakened trust in democratic institutions. These developments have been linked to the idea that new media technology fosters extreme views and political conflict by facilitating s … | Continue reading
Objective The 5:2 diet is a popular intermittent energy restriction method of weight management that awaits further evaluation. We compared the effects of one-off 5:2 instructions with the effects of one-off standard multicomponent weight-management advice; and also examined whet … | Continue reading
In a cohort study, Yuan Zhang and colleagues investigate the associations between coffee and tea consumption and risk of stroke and dementia among participants older than 50 years of age in the UK Biobank. | Continue reading