Culture

Researchers at the Universities of Turku and Helsinki found that women were more likely to volunteer for all-female paramilitary organizations if they had brothers or husbands who were currently serving in the military. This result suggests that bonding with larger and frequently imagined communities, such as the nation state or religious groups, can arise from psychology mechanisms designed by evolution to increase cooperation among close relatives.

A new study in marmoset monkeys suggests that individual variation in genes alters our ability to regulate emotions, providing new insights that could help in the development of personalised therapies to tackle anxiety and depression.

Some individuals are at greater risk of developing anxiety and depression than others and this depends in part upon the interaction between our genes and our environment, such as stressful or adverse events in our lives. Moreover, some of those who develop anxiety or depression may respond better to treatment while others struggle to benefit.

The permanent human occupation on the Tibetan Plateau was facilitated by the introduction of cold-tolerant barley around 3600 years before present (BP), however, how barley agriculture spread onto the Tibetan Plateau remains unknown. Now by using both genetics and archaeological data, researchers from Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS and Lanzhou University revealed that the barley agriculture was mainly brought onto the plateau by the millet farmers from northern China.

A method of weighing the quantities of matter in galaxy clusters - the largest objects in our universe - has shown a balance between the amounts of hot gas, stars and other materials.

The results are the first to use observational data to measure this balance, which was theorized 20 years ago, and will yield fresh insight into the relationship between ordinary matter that emits light and dark matter, and about how our universe is expanding.

The neuroimaging community has made significant strides towards collecting large-scale neuroimaging datasets, which--until the past decade--had seemed out of reach. Between initiatives focused on the aggregation and open sharing of previously collected datasets and de novo data generation initiatives tasked with the creation of community resources, tens of thousands of datasets are now available online. These span a range of developmental statuses and disorders, and many more will soon be available.

MADISON, Wis. -- The world's wood products -- all the paper, lumber, furniture and more -- offset just 1 percent of annual global carbon emissions by locking away carbon in woody forms, according to new research.

An analysis across 180 countries found that global wood products offset 335 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2015, 71 million tons of which were unaccounted for under current United Nations standards. Wood product carbon sequestration could rise more than 100 million tons by 2030, depending on the level of global economic growth.

A Rutgers-led study sheds light on one of the most enduring mysteries of science: How did metabolism - the process by which life powers itself by converting energy from food into movement and growth - begin?

To answer that question, the researchers reverse-engineered a primordial protein and inserted it into a living bacterium, where it successfully powered the cell's metabolism, growth and reproduction, according to the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- The New York Sepsis Initiative was launched in 2014 with the goal of improving the prompt identification and treatment of sepsis. A new study has found that while the program has improved care over all, there were racial and ethnic disparities in the implementation of the best-practice protocols.

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, studied the ecological function of linalool, a naturally abundant volatile organic compound, in wild Nicotiana attenuata tobacco plants. They found the gene responsible for linalool synthesis and release which vary considerably in plants of the same species. Females of the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) prefer to lay eggs on plants with a higher naturally occurring linalool.

Every American hospital has two front doors: The real one, and an imaginary revolving door.

Any patient who winds up back in the hospital within a few weeks of getting out travels through that imaginary door. And the more of them there are, the more money their hospital stands to lose from the Medicare system.

Female bedbugs are able to cleverly control their immune systems ahead of mating, to boost their defence against mating-related infection

Male bedbugs are more attracted to females who have recently feasted on blood as they will lay lots of eggs and their bigger size means they cannot fight back against traumatic insemination

This ability to 'manage' immune systems might be shared by other insects

Findings may pinpoint ways of making female bedbugs more susceptible to natural routes of infection, something that in turn may help us control them

Medicare Part D enrollees may pay more out of pocket for high-priced specialty generic drugs than their brand-name counterparts, according to new research by health policy experts at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Researchers examined differences in brand-name and generic or biosimilar drug prices, formulary coverage and expected out-of-pocket spending across all of the Medicare Part D plans available in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2018.

Whole ecosystems are shifting dramatically north in the Great Plains, a phenomenon likely linked to human influences such as climate change, says new University of Nebraska-Lincoln research that analyzed nearly 50 years' worth of data on bird distributions.

The northernmost ecosystem boundary shifted more than 365 miles north, with the southernmost boundary moving about 160 miles from the 1970 baseline.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Data from social commerce websites can provide essential information to business owners before they make decisions that could determine whether a new venture succeeds or fails, a study from Oregon State University shows.

Social commerce sites such as the review and recommendation site Yelp collect large amounts of data from a variety of users, including customer opinions, geographical distribution of businesses in a given area, and customer "check-ins" that provide a sense of the foot traffic.

Findings from a new study conducted by a team of researchers at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and published in the July issue of Health Affairs, shows that while the number and variety of contracts held by Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have increased dramatically in recent years, the proportion of those bearing downside risk has seen only modest growth.