New Research

Oxytocin Encourages People to Think More About the Group, Less About Themselves

It's not that oxytocin makes people act in a good or bad way, just in a way that best serves the interests of their people

Crummy Weather Can Lead to Harsher Online Restaurant Reviews

Are you sure you didn't like the food? Maybe it was just the weather...

Carcinogenic material was used as a finish coating in this painting.

Byzantine Monks Built Walls With Asbestos, Too

In millennia past, asbestos has also been used to make stronger pottery and flame-proof napkins

How the Zebra Got Its Stripes, According to Science

Rather than acting as camouflage or social signals, zebra stripes seem to deter biting flies

"Make eggs, make eggs!"

A Loving Touch Triggers Cockroaches to Make Babies Faster

Female cockroaches make eggs more quickly if they cuddle with other roaches, but artificial antennae delivering gentle touches can also speed egg growth

Caviar

No-Kill Caviar Could Make Luxury Less Expensive

Given a particular protein and a nice massage, sturgeon give up their eggs without giving up their lives

Problem solved?

There Are Too Many Pink Salmon in the Pacific

Pink salmon populations are booming, at the expense of other species

The projected tsunami propagation for last night's Chile earthquake.

It Is Now Technically Possible to Stop an Earthquake

Scientists have devised a way to reflect seismic waves

Some of the expressions the researchers identified, from top left to bottom right: happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised, disgusted, happily surprised, happily disgusted, sadly fearful, sadly angry.

"Happy Disgust" Is a Newly Recognized Human Facial Expression

Basic emotions like happy, sad or angry blend in interesting ways on the landscape of the human face

Heat Increases the Risk of Early-Term Delivery

As temperatures rise, delivery rooms see a peak in early-term babies

Language Discrimination Goes Beyond Just Grammar

Even when candidates are all equally qualified, employers pick native speakers over those born abroad

Colorful archaea grow in in ponds.

How a Single Act of Evolution Nearly Wiped Out All Life on Earth

A single gene transfer event may have caused the Great Dying

A Virus—Possibly Spread by Pig Feed—Has Killed Millions of Piglets

The virus poses no threat to humans, but is deadly to piglets

Crows Understand Water Displacement Better Than Your Kid

Even Aesop knew that crows were so smart they understood how to get water to their beaks.

Researchers used the game Pardus to look at human organization.

Humans Playing Online Games Organize Themselves into Fractals

Players may be acting in a future, space-based world, but they still organize themselves into the fractals that humans have always fallen into

Kids Get Confused by Anthropomorphized Animals in Storybooks

This doesn't mean we should stop reading them those books, however

Office

Booking Your Vacation At Work? Bad Idea

Study finds that booking a vacation at work tends to lead to purchasing more expensive hotels and being less satisfied with your trip

Chimpanzees Have Bromances, Too

Male chimps can forge long-lasting friendships

None

Astronomers Just Discovered an Asteroid With Rings

They aren't supposed to be there, but...there they are.

New Rule: Just Drink When You’re Thirsty

Don't worry about hitting some arbitrary X-cups-of-water-a-day target

Page 193 of 242