Japanese scientists have devised a mathematical formula that can predict the box office performance of a movie based on the level of related activity on social networks and other websites before and during its release. The study, led by Professor Akira Ishii from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics at Tottori University, also found…
Burying carbon dioxide in the ground, considered a promising way to combat climate change, may increase the risk of earthquakes, according to a report. The process, in which liquefied carbon dioxide is stored in caverns, “may have the potential for causing significant induced seismicity,” the National Research Council said today. Injecting wastewater underground from natural-gas…
For decades, psychologists and other researchers assumed that the mother-child bond was the most important one in a kid’s life. They focused on studying those relationships, and however a child turned out, mom often got the credit — or blame. Within the last several decades, though, scientists are increasingly realizing just how much dads matter….
Scientists say new dads exhibit hormonal changes and, in turn, alter their behavior, which suggests that having children influences men in far-reaching ways. The research found that when a dad was more involved with his kids, he had better health, drank less and had lower substance use, as well as prompting men to be less…
Men who chose to have children later in life have gotten a lot of heat recently, with research churning up evidence that the older a man’s age at time of reproduction, the greater the risk of autism, schizophrenia, and other disorders in their kids. But a new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy…
Climate change is set to reduce Latin America’s capacity to produce renewable energy, according to Roberto Schaeffer, a Brazilian energy planning expert. He told the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development underway in Brazil that many forms of renewable energy are vulnerable to variations in climate, due to their dependence on water…
Thank goodness for granite. If not for the formation and subsequent erosion of large quantities of metal-rich granite on a supercontinent that formed billions of years ago, the evolution of multicellular life—including us—could have been stifled or delayed, according to a new study. For much of its history, life on Earth existed as only single-celled…
In his Brainstorm blog, Michael Ruse weighs in on the firestorm Robert Wright set off in his recent piece for The Atlantic: Robert Wright, the well-known journalist and author, has just suggested that the so-called New Atheists – people like Richard Dawkins who sneer and laugh at religion, thinking it a great evil and that science,…
It’s a tantalizing find in a Biblical mystery — Oxford University researchers have concluded that a set of skeletal remains which many Bulgarians attribute to John the Baptist probably belonged to a first century male from the Middle East. While that doesn’t prove that the bones belonged to the man revered by Christians as the…
The morphology of coelacanths has not fundamentally changed since the Devonian age, that is, for about 400 million years. Nevertheless, these animals known as living fossils are able to genetically adapt to their environment. This is described by Dr. Kathrin Lampert from the RUB’s Department of Animal Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity along with colleagues from…