Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Life
Body’s clock linked to depression
Gene activity in the brain suggests that circadian rhythms are off-kilter in people with depression.
- Humans
Eruption early in human prehistory may have been more whimper than bang
If Hollywood’s right, the apocalypse will be brutal. Aliens, nuclear war, zombies, plague, enslavement by supersmart robots — none of them are good endings. Some archaeologists, however, believe an apocalypse has already come and gone. About 75,000 years ago, they say, a monster volcanic eruption nearly wiped out humankind, leaving behind only a few thousand people to […]
- Life
Gut bacteria adapt to life in bladder
E. coli moving between systems may cause urinary tract infections.
- Psychology
Brain training technique gets a critique
In a new study, a popular style of memory workout leaves reasoning and mental agility flat.
- Health & Medicine
Black women may have highest multiple sclerosis rates
Large study counters common assumption that whites get MS more.
- Humans
Europe is one big family
Continent's ancestry merges about 30 generations ago, genetic study finds
- Health & Medicine
Highlights from the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting
Highlights from the pediatrics meeting held May 4-7 in Washington, D.C., include adolescent suicide risk and access to guns, a reason to let preemies get more umbilical cord blood and teens' cognitive dissonance on football concussions.
- Humans
Greed may breed financial fitness, but evolution allows unselfishness to survive
If greed is good, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the 1987 movie Wall Street, then economics ought to be a superlative science. After all, at the core of economic theory sits a greedy idealization of human nature known as Homo economicus. It’s a fictitious species that represents the individual economic agent, motivated by selfishness. H. […]
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- Anthropology
Paleofantasy
What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live by Marlene Zuk.
- Humans
Human ancestors had taste for meat, brains
A mix of hunting and scavenging fed carnivorous cravings of early Homo species.
