A recurring theme in evolutionary psychology is that humans did not evolve to live in the modern world. Homo sapiens emerged in the harsh conditions of small hunter-gatherer societies of the Pleistocene era. Then, in just a few thousand years, we found ourselves in a very different world of big cities, fast food and all the rest. This change happened so suddenly that evolution had no time to adapt us to the new world. As one early evolutionary psychology text put it, “Few fear motor car ...read more

Each bot in the swarm weighs in at just over an ounce. Credit: TU Delft / MAVLab In 2008, a fire ripped through the architectural building at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands. Firefighters got the burn under control, but afterward, the school wanted to know if any furniture was salvageable. So Guido de Croon, an associate professor of aerospace engineering, flew a drone around the building to survey the damage. But he didn’t want to get too close; de Croon ...read more

A scream evokes a response that few other sounds can. (Credit: GlebSStock/Shutterstock) Of all the sounds humans produce, nothing captures our attention quite like a good scream. They’re a regular feature of horror films, whether it’s Marion Crane’s infamous shower scream in “Psycho” or Chrissie Watkins’ blood-curdling scream at the beginning of “Jaws.” Screams might seem simple, but they can actually convey a complex set of emotions. The ...read more

(Credit: GaudiLab/Shutterstock) While sitting in traffic on the way to work, Mark Hanna, an emergency pediatrician at Maimonides Medical Center in New York, watched as cars blocked the path of an ambulance on a choked-up Brooklyn street. Hanna, a self-proclaimed drone nerd, thought to himself: is there any way an airborne, medicine-carrying device could reach a patient faster than an ambulance on wheels? So, he looked into the response times of ambulances in the crowded NYC borough. Then, ...read more

A baobab tree amid the Makgadikgadi Pan, a region researchers say is the ancestral homeland of all living humans. (Credit: Diego Delso/Wikimedia Commons) A provocative study claims every living human has an ancestral homeland in what’s now Botswana, and that our early ancestors dispersed from that area due to climate change. Dig into the details, however, and there are a few hefty caveats about the researchers’ methods. There’s a reason Ancestry.com and other genealog ...read more

Hurricane Pablo, as seen in the eastern Atlantic by NASA's Terra satellite on Oct. 27, 2019 A late October tropical storm spinning in the North Atlantic entered the record books today when it strengthened into a strange little hurricane. Say hello to Hurricane Pablo, seen in the image above acquired by NASA's Terra satellite. As of about 5 p.m. EST in the U.S., the tiny storm had attained maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour, qualifying it for Category 1 status. That makes ma ...read more

California's Kincade Fire, as seen by the GOES-17 weather satellite on Oct. 27, 2019. Also visible is a blaze more than 50 miles away in Vallejo, CA — believed to have started from embers from the Kincade Fire. (Note: The animation may take a little while to load. Source: RAMMB/CIRA/SLIDER) Early this morning, winds gusted to 93 miles per hour near California's Kincade Fire. A Category 1 hurricane is characterized by sustained winds of 74 to 95 miles per hour. The animation of s ...read more

Albert Lin with one of his drones, preparing to explore the Nan Madol site in Micronesia, in a scene from Lost Cities. (Credit: National Geographic) One of the happy surprises of the space age is that the same technologies propelling our civilization into the future have also proven hugely valuable for recovering lost details of civilizations past. Over the past three decades, satellite imagery and space-based radar have been used to locate more than 1,000 unknown ancient tombs in Egypt, to ...read more

The GOES-16 weather satellite captured this view of smoke streaming out over the Pacific Ocean from California's Kincade Fire on Oct. 24, 2019. (Source: RAMMB/CIRA/SLIDER) Northern California is bracing for winds forecast to gust as high as 80 miles per hour on Sunday morning — posing extreme wildfire risks in an area primed to burn. "A potentially historic, long duration, extremely critical offshore wind event is forecast to occur beginning around 8pm tonight and persist through ea ...read more

(Credit: AbElena/shutterstock) If you spend too much time in the sun, everyone can see it in your red, burnt skin. But if you get just enough sun exposure, scientists can see it in your poop — at least, according to a new study in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. Specifically, the researchers studied people with low Vitamin D to see how they reacted to UV light. This kind of sunlight is one of the main ways our bodies get enough Vitamin D, and the scientists saw that UV exposur ...read more