Research by a Danish physicist suggests that the explosion of massive stars – supernovae – near the Solar System has strongly influenced the development of life. Professor Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of Denmark sets out his novel work in a paper in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. When the…
When human ancestors began scavenging for meat regularly on the open plains of Africa about 2.5 million years ago, they apparently took more than their fair share of flesh. Within a million years, most of the large carnivores in the region—from saber-toothed cats to bear-size otters—had gone extinct, leaving just a few “hypercarnivores” alive, according…
The World Flora catalog is being planned, to be comprised of scientific information and images of plant species worldwide. The project was created in part to help halt the loss of plant biodiversity around the world. Researchers at four institutions will look at historic data on known plants and review and update it before adding it to the catalog.
Are creative people more adept at justifying immoral behavior, and thereby more likely to transgress ethical boundaries? Or does unethical behavior require people to be more inventive, causing them to be more imaginative? Whatever the relationship between creativity and immorality, a growing body of evidence, including a recent paper published in the Journal of Personality…
When we meet new people, we assess their character by watching their gestures and facial expressions. Now a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA suggests that those nonverbal cues are communicating the presence of a specific form of a gene that makes us more or less responsive to others’ needs….
As militaries develop autonomous robotic warriors to replace humans on the battlefield, new ethical questions emerge. If a robot in combat has a hardware malfunction or programming glitch that causes it to kill civilians, do we blame the robot, or the humans who created and deployed it? Some argue that robots do not have free…
Generating wind energy is more than twice as cheap as solar photovoltaic energy production, a study of alternative energy in six developing countries has found. The findings, published in Nature Climate Change, could help inform global debates on financing initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. The authors note that differentiating technologies…
When it comes to adapting to climate change, diversity is the mammal’s best defense. That is one of the conclusions of the first study of how mammals in North America adapted to climate change in “deep time” – a period of 56 million years beginning with the Eocene and ending 12,000 years ago with the…
Scientists have uncovered clues as to how our genomes became riddled with viruses, some dating back 100 million years. More than 90 per cent of every mammal’s genome has no known function, with much of this genetic ‘dark matter’ harboring pieces of DNA from ancient viruses that infected our ancestors. The new investigation, by researchers…
Confidence can boost or bust group decisions