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A devastating hurricane has made it possible to test a rarely observed effect of evolution in the wild for the first time. Scientists transported forest lizards to a group of Caribbean islands stripped bare of vegetation by Hurricane Frances in 2004. They collected pairs of brown anole lizards from a large forested island near Great…
Is religion special? In its decision on Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C., the Supreme Court indicates that it is. That may be the one thing that they got right in this case. The U.S. has on the books a number of valuable laws against discrimination in the workplace, and all organizations (businesses,…
There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle,…
Alzheimer’s disease seems to spread like an infection from brain cell to brain cell, two new studies in mice have found. But instead of viruses or bacteria, what is being spread is a distorted protein known as tau. The surprising finding answers a longstanding question and has immediate implications for developing treatments, researchers said. And…
Are hardbound textbooks going the way of slide rules and typewriters in schools? Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students’ hands within five years. The Obama administration’s push comes weeks after Apple Inc. announced it would start to sell electronic versions…
In a study just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian find that our well-meaning helping hand has often had the unintended consequence of aggravating conflict. Focusing on U.S. food aid windfalls that were triggered by bumper crops in the Midwest, they find that unexpected increases in wheat…
A potentially habitable alien planet — one that scientists say is the best candidate yet to harbor water, and possibly even life, on its surface — has been found around a nearby star. The planet is located in the habitable zone of its host star, which is a narrow circumstellar region where temperatures are neither…
An area of the brain associated with understanding the minds of others is larger in people who have bigger social networks, a new study finds. The study is one of several that have linked specific brain regions to an active social life. In research published last year, scientists found that some brain regions that process…
The first plants to appear on earth 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages by causing a reduction in atmospheric carbon, British researchers said. Scientists say the first plants to grow on land, the ancestors of mosses that grow today, had a dramatic impact on the global carbon cycle and the world’s…
The tip of a girl’s 40,000-year-old pinky finger found in a cold Siberian cave, paired with faster and cheaper genetic sequencing technology, is helping scientists draw a surprisingly complex new picture of human origins. The new view is fast supplanting the traditional idea that modern humans triumphantly marched out of Africa about 50,000 years ago,…