A year-round ice-free Arctic Ocean surface could explain why the Earth of the Pliocene Epoch had the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we have today, but we remain 3 to 9 degrees cooler than the Earth was then.

At a young age, kids learn that the cookies are still there, even though they have been placed in a jar. And they learn that a car driven into a tunnel will reappear on the other side. 

The ability to represent and to track the trajectory of objects which are temporally out of sight is important in many aspects - and also cognitively demanding. In non-human primates, only the great apes have shown convincing abilities there.

Alice Auersperg and her team from the University of Vienna and Oxford have shown that "object permanence" abilities in the Goffin Cockatoo (Cacatua goffini) equals apes and four year old human toddlers. 

A new solar cell and a photo anode made of a metal oxide has resulted in storing nearly five percent of solar energy chemically, in the form of hydrogen.

The solar cell is simpler than that of traditional high-efficiency triple-junction cells based on amorphous silicon or expensive III-V semiconductors.

Like with cigarettes and alcohol, no amount of awareness campaigns about health risks are needed. People know by now and some choose to do it anyway.

Among Swiss men, average age 20, 91 percent drink alcohol, almost half of whom drink six beverages or more in a row and would be categorized as at-risk drinkers. 44 percent smoke tobacco, and are categorized as at-risk smokers (because they smoke at least once a day) and 36 percent smoke cannabis, where over half are at-risk consumers, using the drug at least twice a week.

University of Leicester archeologists lifted the lid of a medieval stone coffin near the final resting place of Richard III this week - and found a mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin.

Though we have access to a seemingly limitless amount of new music each day, we keep coming back to songs or albums, mostly stuff we liked at college age.

It's common to prefer the familiar - even by college students who may self-identify as preferring new music. People pick familiar with even when they believe they would prefer less familiar music. It's one of the reasons why the Pandora algorithm is regarded so highly. Yet we often hear the complaint that radio stations are playing the same songs over and over - and even Pandora plays the same 50 or 100.