Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just frogs, salamanders and their ilk, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley. [...more]
Wellcome Trust scientists have identified a key region of the brain which encourages us to be adventurous. The region, located in a primitive area of the brain, is activated when we choose unfamiliar options, suggesting an evolutionary advantage for sampling the unknown. It may also explain why re-branding of familiar products encourages to pick them off the supermarket shelves. [...more]
A groundbreaking new study finds that genes significantly affect variation in voter turnout, shedding new light on the reasons why people vote and participate in the political system. [...more]
While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor, depending on a variety of social factors. [...more]
In many ways, much has changed since the famous Scopes Monkey trial of 1925. In recent years, US courts have consistently ruled that teaching explicitly religious alternatives to evolution in public schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. But in a new essay published in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, political scientist Michael Berkman and his colleagues show that despite these many legal victories, a surprising number of public high school biology teachers still include creationism or intelligent design in their curriculum. [...more]
Psychologists at the University of Liverpool say that ‘Madonna-style’ inter-country adoptions are causing a rise in the number of children in orphanages. Researchers found that EU countries with the highest rates of children living in institutions also had high proportions of international adoptions. This did not reduce the number of children in institutional care but attributed to an increase. The study highlights that in countries such as France and Spain, people are choosing to adopt healthy, white children from abroad rather than children in their own country who are mainly from ethnic minorities. [...more]
Is fairness simply a ruse, something we adopt only when we secretly see an advantage in it for ourselves? Many psychologists have in recent years moved away from this purely utilitarian view, dismissing it as too simplistic. Recent advances in both cognitive science and neuroscience now allow psychologists to approach this question in some different ways, and they are getting some intriguing results. [...more]
Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why. A new study published in the journal Nature by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues has identified the general underlying mechanism. [...more]
Off to buy a new handbag and fabulous red shoes, or how about overalls and a riding lawnmower? Before going, a mood check for signs of despair and gloom might be in order because how a person feels can impact routine economic transactions, whether he or she is aware of it or not. [...more]
Many parents are convinced that the brains of their teenage offspring are different than those of children and adults. New data confirms that this is the case. [...more]
