Summary: New research reframes the “Cambrian Explosion”—the interval about 500 million years ago when animal diversity rapidly appears in the fossil record—not as a single sudden event but as a multi-stage process largely driven by increasing neural complexity. The study argues that the evolution and regionalization of the brain created genetic toolkits later co-opted to … Read more

Would you like your students to be resilient, motivated, confident, and kind? Do you want a classroom where wellbeing and learning go hand in hand? Those are goals every educator shares, yet finding time to cultivate character, emotional skills, and positive relationships within an already packed school day can feel overwhelming. Positive education offers a … Read more

Summary: Researchers report that introducing people who are hesitant about vaccines to someone who has experienced a vaccine-preventable disease can reduce vaccine hesitancy. In a college-based intervention, about 70% of students who interviewed a person with a vaccine-preventable disease moved from vaccine-hesitant to pro-vaccine. Overall, 75% of initially anti-vaccine students increased their vaccine attitude scores, … Read more

Summary: Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have created a mouse model to study sexual transmission of Zika virus from males to females and vertical transmission from pregnant females to their fetuses, and are using it to explore how the virus crosses the placenta and to test ways to block transmission. Source: NIH/NIAID. Study … Read more

Compassion sustains human life. Without it, countless acts of courage, care, and sacrifice would never have occurred. Imagine a world without figures like Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., St. Francis of Assisi, Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma Gandhi. Imagine a world without the many ordinary people who risked their lives to save others in wartime … Read more

Summary: New research from Harvard Medical School shows that skin-derived signals—not preset genetic programming—direct sensory nerve endings to mature into the forms needed for specific types of touch on hairy or hairless skin. The study reveals that cues from the skin itself determine whether mechanosensory neurons form high-acuity endings found in hairless areas or the … Read more

Evidence shows that the farther birds migrate, the more new neurons appear in parts of their brains linked to navigation and social coordination. New research published in Scientific Reports indicates that birds undertaking longer migratory journeys incorporate a greater number of newly generated neurons into brain regions involved in navigation, spatial orientation, and social behavior. … Read more

Have you ever been told you need to speak up? Do you often agree with others to avoid conflict, even when it goes against your best interests? If so, you may be struggling with assertiveness — the ability to express your needs, set boundaries, and communicate clearly while respecting others. Assertiveness training helps people who … Read more

Summary: A new university study found that people who score higher on measures of psychopathic traits can learn to lie more quickly after practice than those who score low on these traits. The research suggests that greater psychopathic tendency may be linked not to an innate advantage at lying, but to a greater capacity to … Read more

Summary: A new study finds that matriarch African elephants in the wild sleep an average of only two hours per day. Source: University of the Witwatersrand Sleep remains one of biology’s greatest mysteries. Like eating, reproducing and avoiding danger, sleep is a fundamental biological need shared across the animal kingdom. Yet its precise function is … Read more