Climate change is not only a human problem; animals have to adapt to it as well. Some “warm-blooded” animals are shapeshifting and getting larger beaks, legs, and ears to better regulate their body temperatures as the planet gets hotter. Bird researcher Sara Ryding of Deakin University in Australia describes these changes in a review published […]
Cell Press, Current Biology
Posted inSci/Tech
Our dreams’ weirdness might be why we have them, argues new AI-inspired theory of dreaming
The question of why we dream is a divisive topic within the scientific community: it’s hard to prove concretely why dreams occur and the neuroscience field is saturated with hypotheses. Inspired by techniques used to train deep neural networks, Erik Hoel (@erikphoel), a research assistant professor of neuroscience at Tufts University, argues for a new […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Climate change likely drove early human species to extinction, modeling study suggests
October 15, 2020 – Of the six or more different species of early humans, all belonging to the genus Homo, only we Homo sapiens have managed to survive. Now, a study reported in the journal One Earth on October 15 combining climate modeling and the fossil record in search of clues to what led to all those […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Reexamining the history of slavery in the Americas through 23andMe African ancestry data
July 24, 2020 – The effects of the forced deportation of over 10 million African people during the transatlantic slave trade remain entrenched in the DNA of people from North, Central, and South America as well as the Caribbean. Now, in a paper appearing July 23 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers have compiled […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Cedars-Sinai Investigators Develop More Accurate Measure of Body Fat
Aug. 29, 2018 – Cedars-Sinai investigators have developed a simpler and more accurate method of estimating body fat than the widely used body mass index, or BMI, with the goal of better understanding obesity. The new method is highlighted in a study published in Scientific Reports, one of the Nature journals. “We wanted to identify […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Core thinking error underlies belief in creationism, conspiracy theories
Aug. 20, 2018 – It’s not uncommon to hear someone espouse the idea that “everything happens for a reason” or that something that happened was “meant to be.” Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on August 20 have found that this kind of teleological thinking is linked to two seemingly unrelated beliefs: creationism, the belief […]