For linguists, Light Warlpiri provides a unique opportunity to study the creation of a new language — one that doesn’t fit the usual linguistic categories of “dialect,” “pidgin” or “creole.” But more generally, the recognition of a new language is a good reminder that language is a constantly evolving cultural creation. Like biological species, languages…
Islamic astronomy enjoyed a golden age from the ninth to the sixteenth century AD. Great observatories in Baghdad, Damascus, Maragheh, Samarqand and Istanbul mapped the sky to set dates for religious and civil festivals and for astrology. Sophisticated calculations and models led to advances in mathematics. Today, Arab astronomy barely registers on the world map….
The massive amounts of heat produced by cities may be heating up rural areas 1,000 miles away, atmospheric researchers have found in a new modeling study. Scientists have long invoked the “urban island heat effect” to explain why cities are generally hotter than suburban and rural areas. More people, as well as more cars, houses,…
In an upcoming paper for the journal Aquatic Mammals, a pair of scientists detail a series of interactions between an adult bottlenose dolphin with scoliosis and a group of sperm whales in the Azores. The scientists describe their research as the first time sperm whales have been observed interacting in a non-aggressive way with a…
Praying, fighting, dancing, chanting — human rituals could illuminate the growth of community and the origins of civilization.
Men are more likely than women to commit scientific fraud, a new analysis of misconduct convictions reveals. And the urge to cheat spans the entire range of academic careers, from students to seasoned professors. For the new study, published in the journal mBio, scientists examined 228 cases of misconduct in the records of the United…
A special panel of scientists issued a report detailing the dozens of ways how climate change is already disrupting the health, homes and other facets of daily American life. It warns that those disruptions will increase in the future. The report uses the word “threat” or variations of it 198 times and versions of the…
Disgust is the subject of numerous recent works in widely different areas of philosophy, including moral and legal philosophy, aesthetics, and the new iteration of what is being called “experimental philosophy.” Perhaps because disgust is a focused passion, the most fruitful recent work on it has come from the sort of research that is of…
An international research team says it has identified a specific DNA sequence associated with leadership skills. The findings, which appeared online in the journal Leadership Quarterly, suggest that a quarter of the variation among leadership qualities in individuals could be inherited — due to the genotype rs4950. To find this genotype, the team analyzed the…
Last year the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its famous “Doomsday Clock” — which measures the likelihood of global catastrophe — one minute closer to midnight, citing a lack of progress on nuclear disarmament and measures to address climate change. The Bulletin again saw a year of stasis, but opted to keep the clock…