In a special issue on human conflict, Science Magazine considers the deep evolutionary roots of violent confrontation – tracing the trajectory of violence and war throughout history, exploring racism, ethnic conflicts, the rise of terrorism, and the possible future of armed conflicts. The editors also consider our innate capacity to mediate conflict and our ability…
Believing in an involved, morally active God makes people less likely to punish others for rule-breaking, new research finds. However, the researchers also find that religious belief in general makes people more likely to punish wrongdoers – probably because such punishment is a way to strengthen the community as a whole. In other words, religion…
This spring the World Health Organization (WHO) celebrated the early completion the 2015 development goal of bringing improved drinking water to an additional two billion people since 1990. The feat was a landmark in securing what the U.N. General Assembly declared in 2010 was a universal human right: “access to safe and clean water.” In…
Street lighting is changing bug communities and that is affecting everything from the songs birds sing to the makeup of people. A new study found that scavenger and predator insects both collect near the lights. It also shows for the first time that their composition is affected by the lighting. The study is published in…
Throughout the world, climate change is causing age-old ecological partners to miss their cues as seasons shift. The trend may be so strong at higher latitudes that researchers now propose that some species’ ranges could actually shrink away from the poles. This idea comes from studying broad-tailed hummingbirds that migrate north from Central America each…
A new study by University of Notre Dame biologist Beth Archie and colleagues from Princeton and Duke Universities finds that high-ranking male baboons recover more quickly from injuries and are less likely to become ill than other males. Archie, Jeanne Altmann of Princeton and Susan Alberts of Duke examined health records from the Amboseli Baboon…
Electrons rule our world, but not so long ago they were only an idea. May marks the 120th anniversary of a profound and influential creation, the electron theory of Dutch physicist Hendrik Antoon Lorentz. His electron was not merely a hypothesized elementary particle; it was the linchpin of an ambitious theory of nature. Today, physicists…
Researchers have encoded a form of rewritable memory into DNA. The arduous work involved in building the system is almost as notable as the achievement itself, says Drew Endy of Stanford University in California who led the work, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Synthetic biologists have long sought to…
Some NASA supporters are mourning what they see as the decline of U.S. leadership in space. But they should really be celebrating the dawn of a new era. After all, we’ve been stuck in low Earth orbit for several decades now, at considerable cost. Visionary plans for genuine space exploration have gathered dust at NASA,…
Both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers carry mercury, a toxic element, north into the Arctic Ocean new research indicates. While the atmospheric source was previously recognized, it now appears that twice as much mercury actually comes from the rivers. The revelation implies that concentrations of the toxin may further increase as climate…