Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Year in Review: Your body is mostly microbes
Microbiome results argue for new view of animals as superorganisms.
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- Psychology
When stressed, the brain goes ‘cheap’
A new study shows that stress makes you go with your gut, biasing your decisions against the more “expensive” method of thinking things through.
- Neuroscience
Parkinson’s patients drive better with brain stimulation
Patients make fewer errors with a little help from implanted electrodes, at least on a computer.
- Psychology
Barcelona soccer team’s 2009 wins led to slight baby boom
In Bages, birth rates rose 16 percent, but in Barcelona they only increased 1.2 percent.
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- Life
Neandertal genes point to interbreeding, inbreeding
DNA from 50,000 years ago underscores modest levels of mating across hominid populations.
- Microbes
A newfound respect for the microbial world
Despite what many people think about humans’ place in the scheme of things, scientists are finding more evidence that we live in a world of microbes.
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- Animals
China trumps Near East for signs of most ancient farm cats
Earliest evidence found for grain as a force in feline domestication.
- Health & Medicine
Dog dust may benefit infant immune systems
Microbes from pet-owning houses protected mice against allergy, infection.
- Archaeology
Easter Island’s farmers cultivated social resilience, not collapse
A Polynesian society often presumed to have self-destructed shows signs of having carried on instead.
