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New Research

After Eleven Years, the DSM-5 Is Finally Finished

After eleven years, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has updated the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)

Experimental ‘Alcoholism Vaccine’ Gives Drinkers an Instant Hangover

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Twitter Can Help Track Outbreaks of Disease

Next time you have a cold or feel the first malarial chill hit your bones, consider doing the world a favor and tweeting those symptoms out

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Leave No Dolphin Behind: Dolphin Pod Carries Injured Member Until She Stops Breathing

Watch these dolphins try to save their injured friend

Faithful Monkeys Make More Babies

When owl monkeys break up the mate that takes up with “the other partner” produces fewer offspring than faithful monkeys

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There’s No Such Thing as Reading Silently to Yourself

Sitting in a corner reading silently - as you might be doing right now, for example - turns out to impossible

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Quitting Smoking by Age Forty Limits Negative Health Effects

Quitting by 40 will stave off the lost decade a lifelong smoker should otherwise expect

Dogs May Have Evolved From the Wolves Who Liked Eating Trash the Most

There may be an evolutionary reason that your dog eats everything, including the trash

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We Can Recognize Our Own Scent

Before this, it wasn’t clear how people would react to their own smell or even whether they could recognize it.

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Sweet Potato Genes Say Polynesians, Not Europeans, Spread the Tubers Across the Pacific

Sweet potato samples preserved in centuries-old herbariums indicate that Polynesian sailors introduced the yam across Southeast Asia and the Pacific

Two men reenact Roman military life in Split, Croatia.

In Ancient Rome, Children’s Shoes Were a Status Symbol

From a trove of ancient Roman footwear, a rethinking of military life

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We’re Better at Remembering Facebook Statuses Than Book Lines

Turns out, the average person is far more likely to remember a Facebook status than they are a painstakingly edited sentence from a book

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Sea Cows Used To Walk on Land in Africa And Jamaica

Until now, paleontologists have drawn a blank on the evolutionary link between the manatee’s African and Jamaican relatives

Mycobacterium leprae, in red.

Leprosy Can Turn Nerve Cells Into Stem Cells

The scourge of biblical times could open up a new way of making stem cells in the lab

Coal-fired stoves are a major source of black carbon.

Black Carbon May Contribute Almost as Much as Carbon Dioxide to Global Warming

Black carbon’s role in driving warming is much higher than previously thought

Chimps Have an Innate Sense of Fairness

Human ideals about fairness may not be so human after all

Did ancient Australians witness a similar scene?

Indians Made It to Australia More Than 4,000 Years Before the British

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Scientists Finally Figure Out How Squids Mate

There are all sorts of animals that we actually have never seen get it on. Squid used to be one of them

A female H. floresiensis recreation from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Flores Hobbits Were Sort of Like Humans, Sort of Like Chimps, Sort of Like Tolkien’s Fantasy Beings

Archaeologists are slowly bringing “the Hobbit Human” to light as new bones turn up

Mouse Moms Force Mouse Dads To Care for Their Kids

Female mice have tricks for encouraging the otherwise absentee father of their offspring to care and get involved in child-tending

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