No, your weird naked dream isn’t a furtive signal about your love life. What the heck is happening in this dream? (Image: © Shutterstock) You jolt awake in the middle of the night, your heart pounding. It takes you a moment to realize that, no, you didn’t just rush out […]
Research conducted at Swansea University and the University of Milan has shown that students who use digital technology excessively are less motivated to engage with their studies, and are more anxious about tests. Internet Use Reduces Study Skills in University Students Research conducted at Swansea University and the University of […]
Fewer people are reading novels for pleasure than in the past. from shutterstock.com Public anxiety about the capacity of digital-age children and young adults to read anything longer than a screen grab has come to feel like moral panic. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest we must take […]
Caribs hailed from the Northwest Amazon, and archaeologists long believed they never expanded north of the Lesser Antilles. Credit: Painting by John Gabriel Stedman Christopher Columbus’ accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men – stories long dismissed as myths. But a […]
Scientists mapped music samples according to the 13 key emotions triggered in more than 2,500 people in the United States and China when they listened to the audio clips. Credit: Graphic by Alan Cowen Music really is a universal language, according to a new study of how people in the […]
Credit: Charlie Ehlert, University of Utah Health ‘Seeing others suffer is too stressful’ Altruism and a lack of access and affordability are three reasons why people with chronic illnesses are turning to the “black market” for medicines and supplies, new research shows. Scientists at University of Utah Health and University […]
Credit: Junior Libby/public domain It’s hard to comprehend why someone would deliberately light a bushfire. Yet this behavior regularly occurs in Australia and other countries. We would go a long way to preventing bushfires if we better understood this troubling phenomenon. Experts estimateabout 85% of bushfires are caused by humans. A person may […]
Why is it that people find songs such as James Taylor’s “Country Roads,” UB40’s “Red, Red Wine,” or The Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” so irresistibly enjoyable? In a recently published study researchers analyze 80,000 chords in 745 classic U.S. Billboard pop songs—including those three—and find that musical pleasure comes from the […]
Greater education, lower fertility rates. Credit: Earth Policy Institute A global coalition of 11,000 scientists has come up with a planfor dealing with the climate emergency. Most of these are things scientists have been saying for a while: decarbonise the economy, eliminate pollutants, restore ecosystems and reforest, and reduce meat […]
In a study using machine-generated art to understand what makes a picture memorable, researchers found that the images people remembered best had bright colors, simple backgrounds, and subjects centered prominently in the frame. Credit: Image courtesy of the researchers What makes an image memorable? Ask a computer. From the “Mona […]