The first study to document interactions between feral cats and a wild rat colony finds that contrary to popular opinion, cats are not good predators of rats. In a novel approach, researchers monitored the behavior and movement of microchipped rats in the presence of cats living in the same area. They show the rats actively...
New research shows that humans “see” the actions of others not quite as they really are, but slightly distorted by their expectations. Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study could explain why people get others’ actions so wrong and see ambiguous behavior as meaningful, according to authors from the University of Plymouth School...
Bird communities in the Mojave Desert straddling the California/Nevada border have collapsed over the past 100 years, most likely because of lower rainfall due to climate change, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study. A three-year survey of the area, which is larger than the state of New York, concludes that 30 percent,...
We have a ‘thirst for knowledge’ but sometime ‘ignorance is bliss’, so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time? University College London (UCL) psychologists have discovered our brains use the same algorithm and neural architecture to evaluate the opportunity to gain information, as it does to evaluate rewards like...
A scientist at Duke University says the natural evolution of social organizations into larger and more complex communities that exhibit distinct hierarchies can be predicted from the same law of physics that gives rise to tree branches and river deltas. In a paper published June 15 in the International Journal of Energy Research, Adrian Bejan outlines...
The latest shoe has dropped on Facebook: Private data on 50 million users found its way to a shadowy research outfit, Global Science Research, and then on to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm launched by former White House adviser Steve Bannon. Zuckerberg has come out with a mea culpa for this latest breach of...
One of the main draws of the Winter Olympics is the opportunity to witness some of the most exciting and nail-biting athletic feats. The daring events include the bobsled and downhill skiing. Then there’s the terrifying skeleton: Imagine barreling down a narrow chute of twisted ice-coated concrete at 125 miles per hour. Now imagine doing...
Information and communication technologies are radically transforming modern lifestyles. They are redefining our concept of “space” by turning homes and coffee shops into workspaces. (This article was written in a coffee shop.) Instead of going to the theater, many people sit in the comfort of their homes and stream movies. Online purchasing of food, groceries...
Volkswagen, the world’s largest carmaker, along with BMW and Daimler, funded experiments in which cynomolgus monkeys and humans breathed in car fumes for hours at a time to produce scientific research data showing that the pollutant load of nitric oxide car emissions from diesel motors had measurably decreased, thanks to modern cleaning technology. We now...
New fossil finds over the past few years have been forcing anthropologists to reexamine our evolutionary path to becoming human. Now the earliest modern human fossil ever found outside the continent of Africa is pushing back the date for when our ancestors left Africa. The fossil, an upper left jawbone with most of the teeth...
