In order for research to be most effective, the people included need to be as diverse as possible.  That is why the hundreds of papers each year that are surveys of psychology undergraduates who got extra credit come up with the kind of crazy conclusions mainstream media love to write about, but don't have the credibility of clinical trials.

In America, diversity in research is a struggle.  Black and female patients are less likely to agree to participate in research, despite being offered more frequent opportunities to participate. 

In Europe, the arrival of the farmers who replaced Mesolithic hunter-gatherers happened in force 9,000 years ago but it was happening elsewhere prior to that. In Syria, there is even evidence of scientific trait selection in grains in 10,000 B.C. but in other parts of the world agriculture came much later.  

A region in sub-tropical China which did not have agriculture until the arrival of domesticated rice from elsewhere may have gotten agriculture prior to that - as far back as 3,000 B.C., according to a new paper.

Because energy resources in the body must be optimized as much as possible, a new paper says, tasks inherently related to survival, like immune function, take priority. Any leftover energy is then dedicated to reproduction.

 By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, researchers have been able to create delicate flower structures -  not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

Do you see music the same way as your neighbor? Apparently so.  U.C. Berkeley psychologists say people in both the United States and Mexico linked the same pieces of classical orchestral music with the same colors, suggesting that humans share a common emotional palette – when it comes to music and color – that appears to be intuitive and can cross cultural barriers. They suggest that
our brains are wired to make music-color connections depending on how the melodies make us feel 

Uranus and Neptune have a lot in common, climate-wise, even though Uranus is tipped on its side with the pole facing the sun during winter.  They are both home to extreme winds blowing at speeds of over 1000 km/hour, they have hurricane-like storms as big as our whole planet and immense weather systems can last for years. 

But what about their origins? Do the atmospheric patterns arise from deep down in the planet, or are they confined to shallower processes nearer the surface?  Understanding the atmospheric circulation is not simple for a planet without a solid surface, where Earth-style boundaries between solid, liquid and gas layers do not exist.