Loneliness can send a person down a path toward bad health, and even more intense loneliness, studies have shown. But while some have assumed the culprit was a dearth of others to remind a person to take care of himself or herself, new research suggests there’s a direct biological link between being lonely and ill…
Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism—the act of helping someone else, even if it comes at a steep personal cost—as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life was such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why…
A new study finds that diaries and writings from ninth-century Baghdad provide insight regarding strange weather from the era, which could allow scientists to better understand the planet’s weather history. The surviving documents were written by historians and scholars during the Islamic Golden Age between A.D. 816 and A.D. 1009. They represent one of the…
Government scientists in Canada are facing growing restrictions on their ability to speak directly to the public and the press—and could benefit from new policies being instituted south of the border in the United States, according to panelists discussing the issue at the 2012 AAAS meeting in Vancouver, Canada. In one example, Margaret Munro, a…
A new study has found that over the last several decades, nature has increasingly taken a back seat in award-winning children’s picture books — and suggests this sobering trend is consistent with a growing isolation from the natural world. A group of researchers reviewed the winners and honor books receiving the prestigious Caldecott Medal from…
When the Obama administration declared that employees of Catholic institutions must have contraception covered in their health plans (before the president’s deft backtracking compromise), one group of religious Americans stood firmly opposed to Obama’s original position. No, it wasn’t Catholics. Despite the bishops’ howls of protest, poll after poll showed Catholics supporting the administration’s new…
Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring, but Nina Fedoroff, the president of AAAS and one of the world’s most distinguished agricultural scientists, recently broke ranks in a spectacular manner. She confessed that she was now “scared to death” by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled,…
Most people learn to count when they are children. Yet surprisingly, not all languages have words for numbers. A recent study shows that a few tongues lack number words and as a result, people in these cultures have a difficult time performing common quantitative tasks. The findings add new insight to the way people acquire…
The origins of Stonehenge have long baffled historians – was it intended as a monument for the dead, a celestial observatory, a place or healing?
In Washington, religious groups are interest groups. Just like the National Rifle Association or the farm lobby, the bishops want their priorities to take precedence over everyone else’s — and their clerical garb gives their position gravitas. But in truth, the bishops’ claims to moral truth are just that — claims. Their religious vows do…