News Articles

President Biden is touting his strong economic performance but the public disagrees; his approval rating is in the 30th percentile because an expanding economy as framed by politicians still means high inflation to people paying taxes. The psychological impacts of bad economic performance are evident also; when times are good, spending makes people happy. When times are bad, spending is stressful. Customers even leave worse reviews, according to a new paper.

One of the most important examples of early art in Europe, a 11 cm high figurine colloquially dubbed a 'Venus' and found in Willendorf, Austria, is made of a rock called "oolite" which is not found in or around Willendorf. New high-resolution tomographic images lead the authors to concluse the material from which the Venus was carved likely comes from northern Italy or possible eastern Ukraine, which sheds new light on the mobility of the first modern humans south and north of the Alps. 

A new analysis of human remains from ancient DNA of six individuals buried in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia who lived between 18,000 and 5,000 years ago has produced the earliest DNA from the continent, and giving some insight into how early humans lived, traveled and even found love. The study also reanalyzed published data from 28 individuals buried at sites across the continent, generating new and improved data for 15 of them. The dataset of DNA from ancient African foragers reveals a genetic legacy difficult to reconstruct from present-day people because of the many population movements and mixtures that have occurred in the last few thousand years.

There is a myth that people act differently during a full moon but nurses swear by it because of perception of an increase in emergency room cases. Now demographers have linked heat waves to emergency care, except the mental health kind.The paper correlated days with higher-than-normal temperatures during the summer season in the United States to increased rates of emergency department (ED) visits for any mental health-related condition, particularly substance use, anxiety and stress disorders, and mood disorders.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long bursts of radiation recorded on radio waves. They are extremely powerful - for example, during one of the brightest flashes lasting five milliseconds, as much energy is radiated as our Sun generates in a month. The scale of the phenomenon is difficult to imagine. A new study tracks down their source.

HIV normally uses the CCR5 co-receptor to help it infect immune cells, but the receptor’s Δ32 variant effectively blocks viral entry but a 14-month success story using cord blood containing an HIV-resistance gene variant called CCR5Δ32 means HIV has been cured in a patient.

If you watched film and television from an alien spacecraft, you'd wonder how the same government that created a CDC which needs 6 weeks to tell the public that lettuce has E. coli on it can also create "Mission Impossible" plots and shows where FBI agents win every time.The first part is real, the last is certainly fiction. A new study finds that not only is a government database wrong, it is wrong to an extent that is worrisome when we want people to have more trust in law enforcement agencies. 

Protection of personal data in the Internet Age is a big worry but solutions may be lacking. A smartwatch may seem secure, but the neural network processing that health information is using private data that could still be stolen by a malicious agent through a side-channel attack - one in which secret information is gathered by indirectly exploiting a system or its hardware. In one type of side-channel attack, a hacker could monitor fluctuations in the device’s power consumption while the neural network is operating to extract protected information that “leaks” out of the device.

Though there are examples of fit older men, they are the exception, just as attractive young people are the exception. Yet in youth people just accept that, while in middle age men seem to take it more to heart, lowering their feelings of self-worth.In youth, attractiveness can be dismissed as genetics. Later on it becomes inevitable due to age.

Some people believe the immune system is dormant when you are healthy and only kicks into action when a threat is present.Biologically, nature is always trying to kill things, we are just evolved enough to dismiss most without issues, but your immune system is working even when you feel fine. A recent paper highlights how the immune system even causes the liver of the healthy body to produce an energy source called ketone bodies and how that takes place by letting the liver burn fat during fasting. 

Before the invention of modern science and technology, where many diverse foods can be grown in areas once considered inhospitable, the whims of nature determined what you ate, and if you ate at all. 

A recent study found that a virtual reality experience is able to reduce stress among COVID-19 frontline healthcare workers.