Culture

You can resist buying a candy bar while you're waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store--but you'll buy any pair of shoes that are on sale. Your best friend, in contrast, wouldn't dream of buying a pair of shoes he thinks he doesn't need, no matter how low the price--but he can't resist buying that same candy bar you so easily ignore. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, it is precisely those differences in self-control that researchers need to pay attention to when assessing the impact of public policies.

A 9,000 year-old case of human decapitation has been found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in Brazil, according to a study published September 23, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by André Strauss from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany and colleagues.

Why do babies smile when they interact with their parents? Could their smiles have a purpose? In the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE, a team of computer scientists, roboticists and developmental psychologists confirm what most parents already suspect: when babies smile, they do so with a purpose--to make the person they interact with smile in return.

In addition, babies reach that goal by using sophisticated timing, much like comedians who time their jokes to maximize audience response. But there is a twist: babies seem to be doing this while smiling as little as possible.

Authors of a new report have examined the use of gender quotas to increase the number of women at the highest career levels in academia. 'Exploring quotas in academia', a report of a study conducted by EMBO in collaboration with the Robert Bosch Stiftung, looks at the potential benefits and challenges that could arise from the use of quotas as one way to achieve better gender balance in academia. The report describes options for introducing quotas and provides information for decision makers who might consider implementing them.

In this age of the 24-hour news cycle, instant access to all information everywhere, PubMed, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of other ways to glean and share knowledge beyond the traditional stack of printed journals delivered to their door, physicians continue to struggle to arm themselves with the most effective therapies.

Did the prime minister have sexual relations with that (dead) pig? This was the question that set Twitter alight with photoshopped images, video memes and endless pig-related jokes and puns under the #piggate hashtag.

The story came out of a series of explosive extracts from the unauthorised biography of prime minister David Cameron by former Conservative Party treasurer Lord Ashcroft and journalist Isabel Oakeshott, published in the Daily Mail.

zSpace Inc. has announced what they are billing as the world’s first all-in-one desktop virtual reality solution for education. Introduced at ISTE 2015, zSpace for Education is a streamlined hardware and software solution that allows students to manipulate virtual, 3D objects ranging from human hearts to helicopters to learn concepts such as math, physics, engineering and biology.

IKEA is now one of the largest food service providers of responsibly produced fish in the world and brings certified seafood to eight IKEA markets for the very first time, they have announced.

The commitment to offer seafood that is certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). Seafood has a long tradition in Swedish kitchens and it is specifically enjoyed during Christmas, Easter and Midsummer celebrations. Being part of their Swedish heritage, it is sold and served every day at IKEA.

MGA Entertainment has developed Project Mc², a new doll line with science experiment kits based in S.T.E.M. / S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) curriculum. ​​Designed with the help of a former CIA agent and a science PhD​, h​ere are a couple examples from the new line:-McKeyla McAlister: doll and experiment activity set that guides through the process of creating a lava lamp with ingredients from the kitchen.​-Camryn Colye, the doll that comes with blueprint instructions to engineer a skateboard from materials found around the home.

With an aging baby-boomer population and an estimated 10 million Americans predicted to develop some form of brain disease, supplements claiming to help brain function are flooding the market. Wisconsin-based Quincy Bioscience, the self-proclaimed industry leader, has sold more than two million bottles of its jellyfish-based supplement Prevagen since its launch in 2007 on the premise that it is clinically proven to improve memory.

Last week, Greenpeace announced it was hiring a team of journalists to make investigative reporting a pillar of its advocacy work.

The thinking goes that by bringing timely, insightful coverage into the public domain, the organization can boost its chances of pressuring corporations and governments into taking action on some of today’s most pressing environmental issues.

Gayle Newland, 25, has been convicted of three counts of sexual assault against a woman who had believed she was in a sexual relationship with a man. Newland’s case has thrown up some very thorny questions about gender and sexual consent – and about what, exactly, we are required by law to reveal to our sexual partners.

There are two extremes in the debate over capitalism’s role in our present climate change problem. On the one hand, some people see climate change as the outcome of a consumerist market system run rampant. In the end, the result will be a call to replace capitalism with a new system that will correct our present ills with regulations to curb market excesses.

We’re all familiar with what sociologists call “the traditional family”: a straight, married couple, with a male breadwinner who works long hours to support his family, while the woman stays home, takes care of the domestic work, and rears the c

Though national data suggest that women researchers are less likely to obtain government research funding than men, Johns Hopkins scholars have found that male and female researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are funded at nearly the same rate.

Johns Hopkins is America's most heavily government-funded school, with hundreds of millions in grants from the NIH alone. In recent years, universities and the government have been under fire for imbalances in taxpayer funding for women and minorities.