The human-canine bond began more than 30,000 years ago, leading to the extensive domestication of dogs to serve human needs in hunting, protection, and herding. Over time, intentional breeding practices have created hundreds of dog breeds with a wide variety of appearances and behaviors. The prevailing belief has been that selective breeding enhances a dog’s ability to perform specific tasks, but new research challenges this assumption, at least when it comes to skills associated with the shap ...read more

Ancient DNA analysis has allowed us to make some groundbreaking discoveries, and it’s time to add a new one to the list.Ron Pinhasi and his team in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Vienna have uncovered new details about our linguistic roots. In collaboration with Harvard University’s ancient DNA lab, the team has filled a gap in the Indo-European linguistic record that has puzzled scientists and historians for centuries in a new study published in Nature.What ...read more

We tend to think of connectivity as a good thing. For instance, the more connections one has on LinkedIn, the better one’s job prospects would appear. But in people who appear to have lost interest in things they once found pleasurable, too much brain connectivity may actually fuel the condition, according to a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders.Knowing that this condition — which doctors call anhedonia — is associated with mental illnesses could improve diagnosis, by providing ph ...read more

In an increasingly digitizing world, on the tail-ends of a public health crisis which has strained the public’s mental health, remote therapy may be here to stay. But is it an adequate substitute for in-person therapy? The research says it is certainly a great option to have — but not the only one.Virtual Therapy EffectivenessHow useful therapy can be is subjective from person-to-person, and virtual therapy is no exception. “For pure effectiveness, I would say it’s something we call ‘n ...read more

We aren’t all morning people. But maybe we should be, as recent research reveals that people tend to have better mental health and well-being scores in the morning than at night. “There is a clear time-of-day pattern in self-reported mental health and well-being,” the research study states, published in BMJ Mental Health today. “There is also an association with day of the week and season, with particularly strong evidence for better mental health and well-being in the summer.”Starting ...read more

We know that staying active is important. It extends longevity and makes us feel better both mentally and physically. But did you know that staying loose and limber is also important to your long-term health?Research has shown that patients with greater flexibility tend to live longer, healthier lives, says Andrew J. Harb, a specialist in rehabilitation and pain medicine at NYU Langone. In a study published last year in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, researchers mea ...read more

From the bubbling hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, researchers from Montana State University (MSU) have analyzed three thermophilic microbes, revealing how they may have adapted in a low-oxygen environment and evolved to live today. After over two decades of research, the new study published in Nature Communications, highlights three microbes collected from two different hot springs within Yellowstone National Park.With the new information gathered, researchers are hoping it can shed l ...read more

In Southern California, the growing risk of landslides has put many communities on edge, demonstrated by radar data from NASA focused on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County. The peninsula, which sits south of Los Angeles and juts out into the Pacific Ocean, contains an ancient landslide complex that has been active for the past six decades. However, exacerbated by intensifying bursts of rainfall due to climate change, the gradual movement of the landslides has drastically accelerate ...read more

People quite literally have plastic on their brain — or, more accurately, in it. A new study detected microplastics in human brains at much higher concentrations than in other organs. Microplastics are tiny pieces of broken-down polymers. They are building up in the air, water, and soil. They have also been detected in human livers, kidneys, placentas, and testes.However, their accumulation in the brain appears to be increasing much faster and at higher concentrations than in those other organ ...read more

We tend to think of magnets as binary. Batteries have positive and negative ends. Compasses point north and south. And, until late last year, there were two kinds of magnetism: ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.Late in 2024, scientists discovered a third kind: altermagnetism. This class of magnetism — which has some characteristics of the other two — could greatly increase computer memory storage, and, in doing so, also save on both energy and rare earth materials. It could also boost th ...read more