Evolution: Social exclusion leads to cooperation

Social exclusion as a punishment strategy helps explain the evolution of cooperation, according to new research published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Game of go: A complex network

Could computers ever beat the best go players? Although unthinkable at this stage, this could soon become possible, thanks to CNRS theorists. For the first time, two scientists from the Theoretical Physics Laboratory and ...

Interrogational torture: Effective or purely sadistic?

While government officials have argued that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are necessary to protect American citizens, the effectiveness of such techniques has been debated. According to a recent study, when torture ...

A new take on the games people play in their relationships

Human nature has deep evolutionary roots and is manifested in relationships with family members, friends, romantic and business partners, competitors, and strangers more than in any other aspects of behavior or intellectual ...

Is blood thicker than water?

In 1964 biologist William Hamilton introduced Inclusive Fitness Theory to predict and explain phenomena ranging from animal behavior to patterns of gene expression. With its many successes, the theory became a cornerstone ...

Traders who 'sync up' make more money: study

(PhysOrg.com) -- Long-standing problems are quite often solved simultaneously by various people working alone. Take, for example, naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, who separately proposed the theory of ...

What romance novels say about society: A Valnetine's Day Q & A

University of Toronto anthropologist Ivan Kalmar doesn't research romance novels himself, but he is interested in the relationship between theory and everyday life, and encourages his students to turn a critical eye on the ...

Scientists say natural selection alone can explain eusociality

Scientists at Harvard University have sketched a new map of the "evolutionary labyrinth" species must traverse to reach eusociality, the rare but spectacularly successful social structure where individuals cooperate to raise ...

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