Psychologists from Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of Sussex have found that people are as hesitant to reach out to an old friend as they are to strike up a conversation with a s...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-rekindling-friendships-scary.html
Human beings are likely to adopt the thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors of those around them. Simple decisions like what local store is best to shop at to more complex ones like vaccinating a child...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-behavior-social-contagion.html
Hello, stakeholders. (This is the nongendered term of address I've been workshopping because I see "folks" in too many social media posts.) Researchers this week reported on an AI model that atte...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-saturday-citations-irrationality-genetic-basis.html
Using firm-level data from the global supply network, researchers from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) quantified countries' exposure to production losses caused by firm defaults in other countr...
New archaeological investigations in Guatemala reveal that ancient Maya peoples did not just passively watch their dynastic systems collapse at the end of the Classic period. They actively rework...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-royal-reveals-maya-regime.html
You'd be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn't require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back 10 years to realize how quickly things have changed.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-prisoners-years-smartphone-struggle-life.html
A team of researchers from the University of Cologne and the University of Würzburg have found in training studies that the distinction between known and unknown words can be trained and leads t...
A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition—titled "String Quartet No. 1 "Polar Energy Budget"—is based o...
Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-grades-students-surnames-alphabetical.html
Recent strides in interdisciplinary archaeological research in Arabia have unveiled new insights into the evolution and historical development of regional human populations, as well as the dynami...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-evidence-human-occupation-lava-tube.html
Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19% until 2050 due to climate change, a study published in N...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-world-economy-committed-income-reduction.html
New research led by the University of Oxford has found that perceptions of globally shared life experiences and globally shared biology can strengthen psychological bonding with humanity at large...
A team of researchers with varied backgrounds and affiliated with multiple organizations (including the Blackfoot Confederacy) in the U.S. and Canada has conducted a genetic study focused on trac...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-lineage-north-america-native-blackfoot.html
Modern Eurasian sheep predominantly belong to only two so-called genetic matrilineages inherited through the ewes, so previous research has assumed that genetic diversity must already have decrea...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-insights-genetic-bottleneck-characterizing-early.html
A team of archaeologists at the Institute of Archaeology, HUN-REN Research Center for the Humanities, in Hungary, working with a colleague from Stockholm University, has revisited a mystery: a Ro...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-lynx-bottom-roman-era-pit.html
Pottery was largely unknown in Australia before the recent past, despite well-known pottery traditions in nearby Papua New Guinea and the islands of the western Pacific. The absence of ancient In...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-aboriginal-people-pottery-distant-islands.html
It's Saturday, which means that in a universe where the arrow of time moves backward, people have to go to work tomorrow. In such a hypothetical universe, Garfield hates Fridays—tough to imagin...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-saturday-citations-bird-qubits-impossible.html
New evidence of one of the first cities in the Pacific shows they were established much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from The Australian National University (ANU).
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-pacific-cities-older-previously-thought.html
A team of archaeologists affiliated with several institutions in France and one in Germany has found that ritualized human sacrifice was common across Europe during the Neolithic.
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-team-evidence-commonly-ritualized-human.html
An analysis of building footprints in major US metropolitan areas identifies five different neighborhood types that vary in footprint size, shape, and placement, and which are statistically assoc...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-footprints-neighborhood-sociodemographic-traits.html
Cultural values may have become more different globally, but more similar regionally, over the past 40 years according to a paper published in Nature Communications. The authors suggest that over...
The discovery of the oldest pottery ever found in Australia on Jiigurru/Lizard Island off the Queensland coast is challenging the idea that Aboriginal Australian communities were unaware of potte...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-discovery-pottery-rewrites-aboriginal-history.html
A team of archaeologists, anthropologists and evolutionary specialists from Argentina, the U.K. and Germany has found possible evidence of a tamed fox living with a human hunter/gatherer companio...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-fox-bones-ancient-argentinian-burial.html
Algorithms were supposed to make our lives easier and fairer: help us find the best job applicants, help judges impartially assess the risks of bail and bond decisions, and ensure that health car...
Ancient Egyptians were known for their religious beliefs and astronomical knowledge of the sun, moon, and planets, but up until now, it has been unclear what role the Milky Way played in Egyptian...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-hidden-role-milky-ancient-egyptian.html
A large, highly decorated bronze lamp found in a ditch near the town of Cortona, central Italy, is significantly older than previously estimated and shows the god Dionysus, a new study published ...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-unraveling-iconography-etruscan-lamp-cortona.html
Interstate gun transfers are a major contributor to gun crime, injury, and death in the United States. Guns used in crimes traced to interstate purchases move routinely between states along multi...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-iron-pipeline-interstate-guns-east.html
A team of archaeologists and anthropologists from multiple institutions in the U.S. has found evidence that the Clovis, an early North American population, may have used so-called Clovis points f...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-clovis-people-butcher-animals.html
Johanna Nichols, a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, has used her pioneering work in the field of language history to learn more about language development in North America. She...
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-languages-north-america-language-groups.html
Remote work could cut hundreds of millions of tons of carbon emissions from car travel—but at the cost of billions lost in public transit revenues, according to a new study.