Viewpoint: India needs to refine its view of the benefits and limits of crop biotechnology

This year’s Nobel laureates in Economics affirm that the future of growth models will be driven by innovation. This is both a challenge and an opportunity, and resonates deeply with…

Trucked-in honeybees may edge out bigger bumblebee foragers

Even in the face of vast fields of flowers, local bumblebees may face the sting of competition when people bring their honeybees to the floral feast. When beekeepers truck their…

Reading Habits Predict Hidden Biases Toward Autism

Summary: A new study shows that the newspapers people read are strong predictors of their automatic, unconscious biases toward autism—even after accounting for age, education, political views, and personal experience.…

Huge relatives of white sharks lived earlier than thought

Some 115 million years ago, a veritable fleet of giant predators prowled the waters near Australia. There were long-necked plesiosaurs, snaggletoothed pliosaurs with massive heads, dolphinlike ichthyosaurs, and now —…

Nicotine Withdrawal Makes Smokers More Sensitive to Pain

Summary: A new study shows that abstinent smokers experience heightened pain sensitivity linked to altered activity in specific brain regions. Compared to nonsmokers, abstinent smokers required more postoperative pain relief—especially…

PTSD Linked to Accelerated Brain Aging

Summary: A new study using advanced deep-learning brain age estimation shows that World Trade Center responders with PTSD exhibit signs of accelerated brain aging. Using BrainAgeNeXt, a model trained on…

Blocking a Key Protein Greatly Reduces Alzheimer’s Damage

Summary: New findings show that removing Centaurin-α1, a protein elevated in Alzheimer’s disease, significantly reduces inflammation, plaque buildup, and cognitive deficits in a well-established mouse model. Eliminating this protein normalized…

Warmth and Hugging Strengthen the Feeling of Being You

Summary: Changes in skin temperature play a key role in how strongly we experience our bodies as our own. Thermoception influences emotion, identity, and mental health by acting as a…

How male seahorses tap into their mothering side

If there were to be a “best dad” award in the animal kingdom, seahorses would be a shoe-in. That’s because males, not females, of these peculiar fish carry their young…

Bonsaiing mangroves to uncover how traits shape – and flip – ant competition – Functional Ecologists

In this ‘Behind the Paper’ blog post, author Mark Wong, a Forrest Fellow at the University of Western Australia, discusses his new article  ‘Functional trait dissimilarity drives arboreal ant community…