Banner
Ousiometrics Analysis Says All Human Language Is Biased

A new tool drawing on billions of uses of more than 20,000 words and diverse real-world texts claims...

Wavelengths Of Light Are Why CO2 Cools The Upper Atmosphere But Warms Earth

There are concerns about projected warming on the Earth’s surface and in the lower atmosphere...

Here's Where Your Backyard Was 300 Million Years Ago

We may use terms like "grounded" and terra firma to mean stability and consistency but geology...

Convergent Evolution Cheat Sheet Now 120 Million Years Old

One tenet of natural selection is a random walk of genes but nature may be more predictable than...

User picture.
News StaffRSS Feed of this column.

News Releases From All Over The World, Right To You... Read More »

Blogroll
We're all capable of committing violence. The person who truly cannot commit violence is quite rare, and likely learned it. Some aspects of behavior depend on interactions in the brain between genetic and environmental factors.

And so, it is said, an individual may be more vulnerable to developing violent behaviors if they have predisposing factors and then undergo stress, abuse, or other triggers, especially early in life.  Neurobiologists have also documented numerous examples of sex differences in the human brain, including differences in brain regions and circuits relevant to violent behavior. 

States that have decriminalized marijuana have also seen dramatic increases in children requiring medical intervention, according to research in the Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Association of Unintentional Pediatric Exposures with Decriminalization of Marijuana in the U.S.") which analyzed call volume to U.S. poison centers from January 2005 through December 2011. 

Men, if you want a short term thing and not a lot of talks about "us" and "the relationship", your odds improve if your parents gave you the gift of a wider face.

Women see wider faces as more dominant, and therefore more attractive, at least for short-term relationships. At around age 30, women start to prefer men with jobs and stable personalities.

And since this was a study of speed dating participants, it's probably true, for speed dating participants.

Insects taste through hair-like structures on the body called  sensilla.  Sensilla contain receptor nerve cells, each of which is sensitive to a particular substance.

In insects like the honeybee, sensilla are found on the mouthparts, antenna and the tarsi – the end part of the legs. Honeybees weigh information from both front tarsi to decide whether to feed, finds a new study on the ability of honeybees to taste with claws on their forelegs, which reveals details on how this information is processed.

A new study found that the ability to follow another's gaze or look in the direction someone is pointing, two examples of receptive joint attention, is significantly heritable.

Determining such communicative cues are significantly heritable means variation in this ability has a genetic basis, the authors say, which has led them to the vasopressin receptor gene, known for its role in social bonding.

They are looking for insight into the biology of disorders in which receptive joint attention is compromised, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which could lead to new diagnosis and treatment strategies.

In 2005,the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa  revealed that the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa  has a strange peanut shape, leading to questions about why. Now, using ground-based observations, a group has measured the speed at which Itokawa spins and how that spin rate is changing over time and combined these observations with theoretical work on how asteroids radiate heat.