Science (Page 192)

Sometimes the body moves, but not the mind. fizkes/Shutterstock If you have moved from one country to another, you may have left something behind – be it a relationship, a home, a feeling of safety or a sense of belonging. Because of this, you will continually reconstruct mental simulations ofContinue Reading

Even anger serves a purpose. TeodorLazarev/Shutterstock As psychiatry, which uses medical and biological methods to treat mental disorders, has largely overtaken psychotherapy, which relies on non-biological approaches such as conversation and counselling, psychotherapists have sought alternative challenges. One common approach is to focus on enhancing the happiness of mentally healthyContinue Reading

Maths can describe how we update our views to make a decision based on the information available. Triff/Shutterstock Understanding the human mind and behaviour lies at the core of the discipline of psychology. But to characterise how people’s behaviour changes over time, I believe psychology alone is insufficient – andContinue Reading

Yaroslav Vitkovskiy/Shutterstock What is cosmic microwave background radiation? Did it happen after the Big Bang? – Sreehari, aged nine, Kerala State, India The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB for short), is light: the oldest and most distant light that we can see in the entire universe. It comes from soon afterContinue Reading

Flickr, CC BY If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted. As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive whenContinue Reading

Nature wants us to reproduce, so how come celibacy evolved? Carsten ten Brink/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND Why would someone join an institution that removed the option of family life and required them to be celibate? Reproduction, after all, is at the very heart of the evolution that shaped us. Yet manyContinue Reading

Tombstones investigated in new research, most from 1338. P.-G. Borbone/Nature, Author provided It is not an exaggeration to say that the question of where and when the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic ever, originated is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. After all, the Black Death was theContinue Reading