Temperance in Eden, a painting by Autumn Nelson © The artist. Courtesy Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
As the U.S. population ages, old people are committing more crimes. Positive affect declines almost continuously in humans between the ages of nine and ninety-four, and the gut microbiome may live for years after the body dies. People feel romantic and sexual love throughout their bodies but experience love of wisdom and of God mostly in their heads. A reduction in pain-catastrophizing can help fibromyalgia patients. Functional MRI scans revealed that lonely Game of Thrones fans do not fully distinguish between real people and characters from the show. Researchers determined that the anticipation of inflation caused inflation in revolutionary France. Prehistoric bones discovered in the Cueva de los Mármoles may have been de-fleshed for use as tools rather than in the course of cannibalism. Sadists are harder to startle. Intrasexual competition causes women to encourage women they consider as attractive as themselves to cut their hair short. Black American adults have the lowest rate of financial independence from their parents, whereas Hispanic Americans have the highest rate of parent-child financial interdependence. Fifteen percent of American children report using logical reasoning to disprove the existence of Santa.
In the Netherlands, researchers captured pied flycatchers who were migrating back from Africa and drove them by night to Sweden, farther north than they would usually fly, to offset the effects of an earlier spring. The harassment of porpoises by Southern Resident orcas over the past six decades may be the result of social bonding, hunting practice, and mismothering behavior. Jellyfish are capable of associative learning. Mussels can adjust their heart rates to deal with warmer temperatures. As noise pollution grows more intense, pied tamarins rely more heavily on scent marking to communicate. Thirty seconds of mouse pup cries causes their mothers to release milk. Male clouded Apollo butterflies base the size of the plugs they use to seal the genitals of their mates on the thoracic width (and presumptive fitness) of the female. Paper cups are as harmful as plastic cups to aquatic midge larvae. Scientists found that almost all non-steel “eco-friendly” drinking straws they tested contained toxic chemicals, and crime-scene investigators were advised to update their techniques to account for the gunshot residue of eco-friendly ammunition.
Scientists argued that the cosmic airburst of a comet from the Centaur System 12,800 years ago over the Euphrates caused drying and cooling that forced hunter-gatherers at Abu Hureyra to take up agriculture. Kilonovae may reveal whether deriving the value of the Hubble constant from supernovae or from background radiation is more accurate. The previously unexplained brightness of the universe’s early galaxies was due to bursts of star formation. Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, which are neither planets nor stars, were observed in the Orion Nebula. Dimethyl sulfide may be present on the exoplanet K2-18b. The great mounds of Arrokoth are similar enough to suggest a common origin. Scientists warned against anthropomorphizing trees.
