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If you have traveled, you have seen someone who is a frequent traveler be offered an upgrade but decline because they are with someone else and want to stay together. This is rare in other species. Yet not all experiences get equal treatment - if a parent is traveling with a child they may take the upgrade to give it to the child - and a new paper sought to understand how consumers make trade-offs between experience quality and togetherness. The authors write that consumers prioritize physical togetherness with relationship partners over opportunities that would improve an experience in real time.

Cooperative breeders, where we count on the help of others to raise offspring,is not unique to humans. It may only appear that way.A new paper amassed data from 90 human populations comprising 80,223 individuals from many parts of the world — both historical and contemporary. They compared the records for men and women to lifetime data for 45 different nonhuman, free-ranging mammals. The argue that humans are a non-exceptional species of mammal. Says first author Cody Ross, PhD, anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute; “we can quite successfully model reproductive inequality in humans and nonhumans using the same predictors.”

A new demography paper argues that there is a reason more black women have voted for Democrats than men have since 1980 - more black men are in jail.

CRISPR/Cas9 technology has led to a “homing gene drive system” based on a specific
Drosophila suzukii gene called doublesex that can suppress populations of D. suzukii
vinegar flies – the “spotted-wing Drosophila” that devastate soft-skinned fruit in North America, Europe and parts of South America.

A new study suggests alcoholism coupled with genetic susceptibility is associated with changes to gene expression indicative of disease progression in the brains of mice that are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s. When repeatedly exposed to intoxicating amounts of alcohol, these mice showed signs of cognitive decline approximately two months sooner than they usually would.

If you have been to a zoo and been around our primate evolutionary cousins with kids, you may have had an awkward moment or two. They are going to masturbate, and don't care who's watching.A new study says more is better. The Postcopulatory Selection Hypothesis believes it helps shed low-quality semen while the The Pathogen Avoidance Hypothesis believes it may reduce the risk of contracting sexually-transmitted infections. Primates have been doing it for at least 40 million years so something keeps it going.

A traditional endoscopy, while valuable for detecting high-risk lesions, is an expensive, invasive procedure. There are ingestible cameras but are not controlled by physicians, they are just swallowed and the body does the rest.

Two cases of Yersinia pestis in human remains found in a mass burial in Charterhouse Warren in Somerset and one in a ring cairn monument in Levens in Cumbria show that the Plague may have erupted a few times in severe form across Europe, and it was even in England as far back as 2000 B.C.In the 1960s, coronavirus was discovered as distinct from the common cold so future analyses may also find pandemics that occurred long before 2003, 2012, and 2019. 'The plague', as it became known in the Middle Ages, has previously been identified in Eurasia between during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, so we now know it was easily transmitted. Even to an island. 

Volunteering often makes us feel good but does it mean better health? Epidemiologists in a new paper argue it does, but the confounders are obvious; parents who take their kids to volunteer are often wealthier and in better health and on surveys about their kids claim better outcomes.The work originated from parent-reported survey data of 22,126 children (6 to 11 years) and 29,769 adolescents (12 to 17 years) in the 2019 to 2020 National Survey of Children’s Health. The authors adjusted and weighted the data to reflect their beliefs about the demographic composition of youths in each state. 

A phrase like 'spring in your step' is usually meant to evoke enthusiasm or happiness but a new study finds that its mechanism, the spring-like arch in our feet, did help us walk on two feet. Just in a different way than previously believed.Most believe that the raised arch of the foot helps us walk by acting as a lever which helps to lift the body into the next step by propelling the body forward but the new work argues that the recoil of the flexible arch repositions the ankle upright for more effective walking - and the effects in running are even greater.

There were 93 school shootings in the US in a recent two-year period but they were rarely committed by students. Sometimes they were former students of the school but new a survey analysis say their mental health issues may have been aggravated by memories of bullying.

A wearable, pocket-sized, automated insulin delivery device has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company calls is the iLet Bionic Pancreas but it's obviously not bionic any more than String Theory is a scientific theory. However, it is now available in this universe for the almost two million Americans with type 1 diabetes.