Using innovative new methods researchers have built a new index that uses data from books and newspaper to track levels of national happiness from 1820. Their research could help governments to make better decisions about policy priorities.
Read moreA new study explores the chemistry as well as the complicated and alarming history of DFDT, a fast-acting insecticide.
Read moreThe Neolithic Agricultural Revolution is one of the most thoroughly-studied episodes in prehistory. But a new article shows that most explanations for it don't agree with the evidence, and offers a new interpretation.
Read moreArchaeogenetic analyses provide new insights into social inequality 4,000 years ago: nuclear families lived together with foreign women and individuals from lower social classes in the same household.
Read moreBefore life, there was RNA: Scientists show how the four different letters of this genetic alphabet could be created from simple precursor molecules on early Earth — under the same environmental conditions.
Read moreScientists have combined archaeological, genetic and stable isotope data to understand the demographic processes associated with the iconic Battle Axe Culture and its introduction in Scandinavia.
Read moreA new study offers an explanation for how ''protocells'' could have emerged on early Earth, eventually leading to the cells we know today. The work suggests that molecules called cyclophospholipids may have been the ingredient necessary for protocells to form important internal structures called vesicles, which likely kicked off the evolutionary process.
Read moreFossils preserved in Dominican amber reveal a new family, genus and species of microinvertebrate from the mid-Tertiary period, a discovery that shows unique lineages of the tiny creatures were living 30 million years ago.
Read moreTo understand the environmental pressures that shaped human evolution, scientists must reconstruct the ecosystems in which they lived. Because putting together the puzzle of millions-of-years-old ecosystems is a difficult task, many studies draw analogies with present-day African ecosystems, such as the Serengeti. A new study calls into question such approaches and suggests that the vast majority of human evolution occurred in ecosystems unlike any found today.
Read moreLimits to growth lie at the heart of how all living things function. The diversity of life is staggering. From microscopic algae to elephants, life has devised countless ways to thrive in every environment on the planet. But while biologists have tended to focus on the many varied forms that species have evolved, the age of 'big data' offers an unprecedented view of some surprisingly common features shared by all creatures, great and small.
Read more