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The helpfulness of grandmothers is the reason humans don’t die in their thirties the way chimpanzees do, new research shows – and may even explain our bigger brains. Computer simulations show that with only a little grandmotherly care, animals with chimpanzee lifespans evolve to reach a human level in less than 60,000 years. “Grandmothering was…
Researchers at Northwestern University have found evidence that premonition, or anticipation of an event without conscious reason, may exist. The scientists came to this conclusion after looking at the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010, according to a statement from Northwestern University. Researchers acknowledge that our subconscious minds sometimes know more about…
Researchers have observed in an experiment the exact steps bacterial genes take to evolve a new ability, unexpectedly adding a new twist on an old model
The European Space Agency has approved the first of its small science missions. Don’t let the description fool you, there is nothing small about the goals of Cheops. It’s a step towards finding habitable planets
Researchers said global warming has caused the glacial ice on the runway to turn to mush just four years after it was built for about £30 million. It was due to receive about 20 flights each summer but only six have been able to land in the past two years. The runway was supposed to…
Here’s something for raw-food aficionados to chew on: Cooked food might be a big reason humans were able to grow such large brains compared to their body size, scientists say. If modern human ancestors had eaten only raw food, they’d have to regularly feed more than nine hours a day, according to a study published…
The Pentagon ranks it as a national security threat and, left unchecked, climate change is expected to cost the US economy billions of dollars every year – and yet it has proved the great unmentionable of this election campaign. Amid unprecedented melting of the Arctic summer sea ice, new temperature records in the US and…
Women cluster in certain fields, according to a study of millions of journal articles, while men get more credit
Jim Holt’s Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story is a portrait gallery of leading modern philosophers. He visited each of them in turn, warning them in advance that he was coming to discuss with them a single question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” He reports their reactions to this question,…
From Slate’s Future Tense blog: A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience indicates that human activity triggered a deadly earthquake in southern Spain last year. Meanwhile, the next day in Italy, six scientists and a government official were sentenced to six years in prison for a deadly earthquake last year that they played no…