Tracking mobile phone data is often associated with privacy issues, but these vast datasets could be the key to understanding how infectious diseases are spread seasonally, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Princeton University and Harvard University researchers used anonymous mobile phone records for more than 15 million people to track the…
We are creatures of habit, nearly mindlessly executing routine after routine. Some habits we feel good about; others, less so. Habits are, after all, thought to be driven by reward-seeking mechanisms that are built into the brain. It turns out, however, that the brain’s habit-forming circuits may also be wired for efficiency. New research from MIT shows that habit formation,…
“War—what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again.” So runs the 1970 pop song that Edwin Starr made famous and that’s now the obligatory soundtrack for every documentary about the Vietnam antiwar movement. For the historians, anthropologists and economists who study warfare, it’s more complicated than that. The sheer ubiquity of war across time and place suggest that it must…
Male and female brains operate differently at a molecular level, a Northwestern University research team reports in a new study of a brain region involved in learning and memory, responses to stress and epilepsy. Many brain disorders vary between the sexes, but how biology and culture contribute to these differences has been unclear. Now Northwestern neuroscientists have found an intrinsic…
The evolutionary loss of the ‘altruistic’ worker caste in ants is not accompanied by a loss of genes, an international team of researchers has found. The results reported in this new research add to a growing body of literature suggesting that many traits may evolve by tweaks in the regulation of pre-existing genes and networks. Phenotype gain and loss may…
Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a gene that could be an important cause of obesity. The gene, which encodes a protein called 14-3-3zeta, is found in every cell of the body. But when scientists silenced the gene in mice, it resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in the amount of a specific kind of unhealthy…