Who could imagine a 21st century without data? Sophisticated information processing is key to the way societies function today. And it turns out it was also critical to the evolution of early states. According to new research ...
Archaeology
May 27, 2020
1
90
It's almost impossible to imagine biology without individuals—individual organisms, individual cells, and individual genes, for example. But what about a worker ant that never reproduces, and could never survive apart from ...
Other
Apr 16, 2020
10
180
When a grassland becomes a desert, or a clearwater lake shifts to turbid, the consequences can be devastating for the species that inhabit them. These abrupt environmental changes, known as regime shifts, are the subject ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 2, 2020
1
84
Cities change as they grow—not only by adding area or population but also in a variety of other ways, from the length and width of their roads to economic growth to the distribution of elementary schools. Social scientists ...
Social Sciences
Feb 12, 2020
0
66
Budgeting resources isn't just a problem for humans preparing a holiday dinner, or squirrels storing up nuts for the winter.
Evolution
Dec 18, 2019
2
74
During Earth's last glacial period, temperatures on the planet periodically spiked dramatically and rapidly. Data in layers of ice of Greenland and Antarctica show that these warming events—called Dansgaard-Oeschger and ...
Mathematics
Oct 17, 2019
0
89
Humankind first started farming in Mesopotamia about 11,500 years ago. Subsequently, the practices of cultivating crops and raising livestock emerged independently at perhaps a dozen other places around the world, in what ...
Archaeology
Oct 11, 2019
21
1322
Just as mathematics reveals the motions of the stars and the rhythms of nature, it can also shed light on the more mundane decisions of everyday life. Where to park your car, for example, is the subject of a new look at a ...
Mathematics
Sep 20, 2019
7
615
Seven thousand years ago, societies across Eurasia began to show signs of lasting divisions between haves and have-nots. In new research published in the journal Antiquity, scientists chart the precipitous surge of prehistoric ...
Archaeology
Sep 18, 2019
1
370
As cities grow in size, crime grows even faster. But while certain types of crime—car theft and robbery, for example—exponentially outpace the population, other crime categories buck the trend. Rape, for example, grows ...
General Physics
Sep 18, 2019
0
179
