Summary: New research suggests oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” may help protect women from mood disturbances caused by sleep disruption and hormonal changes during postpartum and menopause. In a controlled…
Category: Life
Maternal Depression Linked to Weaker Bonds
Summary: A comprehensive global review confirms that maternal depression undermines parenting, impairing mother-infant bonding and reducing sensitivity to a child’s needs. Researchers analyzed nearly a decade of observational studies, finding…
Study Challenges Link Between Football and Brain Protein Buildup
Summary: A new study questions whether playing youth football leads to harmful protein buildup in the brain. Researchers examined 174 donated brains, including former high school and college players, and…
Spotting Silent Scars: A New Way to Detect Childhood Abuse
Summary: Childhood maltreatment leaves profound and often unseen scars, affecting mental health, physical well-being, and social development long into adulthood. Traditional assessments are invasive and often miss the full scope…
AI is helping to develop gentically engineered food for long-term space missions. We may all benefit
Stored meats, tomatoes and even onions can’t last a few weeks let alone a seven-to-10 month journey to Mars but Australian scientists say artificial intelligence may help bridge the 225…
Familiar Faces and Fights: What Monkeys Like to Watch Most
Summary: A new study reveals that long-tailed macaques, like humans, are most captivated by videos featuring social conflict and familiar group members. Researchers showed the macaques videos of monkeys engaged…
Greenland sled dog DNA is a window into the Arctic’s archaeological past
A millennium-long story about Greenland is written in the genes of the island’s sled dogs. A new genomic analysis, published July 10 in Science, suggests that humans (and their sled dogs)…
Trees can’t get up and walk away, but forests can
An army of treelike creatures called Ents marches to war in the second The Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers, walking for miles through dark forests. Once they…
Ji Chen – Functional Ecologists
In this blog post, we hear from Senior Editor Ji Chen, Professor at the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences! Ji’s research focuses on uncovering the mechanisms that…
