Culture

Home appliances and electronics typically make 15-20 percent profit for companies but they can realize a 200 percent profit from selling extended warranties. A new paper in the January issue of Marketing Science finds independent warranties lower extended warranty prices but consumers may actually be worse off.

Two researchers are taking a new twist on long-published research about what an ancient civilization did for a living. W. Flint Dibble, a University of Cincinnati doctoral student in the Department of Classics, and Daniel J. Fallu, a doctoral student in archeology at Boston University, are going to present their insights surrounding a key site from the Greek Dark Age on Jan. 9, at the joint annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Society for Classical Studies (SCS, formerly known as the American Philological Association), in New Orleans later this week.

Obesity has gone up but it can't be because of larger portion sizes in fast food. Despite the perception that meals have gotten bigger, the sizes and formulations have been basically unchanged since 1996, according to two new reports from researchers at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

The bremelanotide pivotal registration program for the phase 3 reconnect study in the United States for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) has begun.

A suicide attempt by a parent increased the odds nearly 5-fold that a child would attempt suicide, according to a new analysis.

Other studies have established that suicidal behavior can run in families but few studies have looked at the pathways by which suicidal behavior is transmitted in families.

Violent conflict may, under certain conditions, offer a biological benefit to those who take part in it, say anthropologists who correlated violent raids and combat to reproductive fitness.

In the paper, authored by Luke Glowacki, a Harvard doctoral student working with Richard Wrangham, an anthropology professor, the authors noted that members of an East African herding tribe who engaged in conflict - in the form of violent raids carried out on neighboring groups - had more wives, and thus more opportunities to increase their reproductive success through having more children.

Energy is cheaper in America than in Germany and it shows in how bright comparably sized cities are. American cities emit several times more light per capita than comparably sized German ones, according to a recent paper. The size of the gap grew with city size, as light per capita increased with city size in the USA but decreased with city size in Germany. The study also examined regional differences, and found that light emission per capita was higher in cities in the former East of Germany than from those in the former West.