Anthropology

There's no question "Gone With The Wind" is the most successful movie of all time, when you count tickets sold, but it's not the most influential. Nor is "Star Wars." A network analysis instead shows that title goes to "The Wizard Oz", the definitive Judy Garland film. released in the same year as "Gone With The Wind." The analysis was of 47,000 films listed in IMDb (the internet movie database) and based on how much each film had been referenced by subsequent films.  To calculate the influence score for the 47,000 films investigated in this study, the authors treated the films as nodes…

There is a reason that environmental groups and other anti-science activists out-earn the pro-science non-profit world by 1000X, and that reason is emotion. See a scientist be emotional or aggressive in defending their work and any number of people, including other scientists, will chide them and say that is not how scientists are supposed to act. Meanwhile, the trial lawyers who run environmental groups know that they have set the bar for how they are supposed to act differently; they are supposed to be passionate. It's expected. The proof that emotional verbiage works was evident in a PNAS…

Recent DNA analyses show that ancient populations in the Peruvian highlands adapted wild tubers into potatoes - and then those potatoes in turn modified them in ways distinct from other global populations. Potatoes are native to South America and became an agricultural crop in the Andean highlands of what is now Peru. But wild tubers genetically modified into potatoes did something interesting in return; they altered the genomes of the Andeans who made it a staple of their diet. Co-evolution. This co-evolution between agriculture and human is evident in the configuration of a gene associated…

Anti-gun proponents like to produce headlines showing a young child accidentally shot another family member with a pistol, but that kind of cultural framing may be doing more harm than good, because a new study reaffirms what most gun owners knew: Gun harm is not caused by lazy or irresponsible gun owners letting their kids get them by mistake, it is from assaults by men. And teenagers at greatest risk for committing acts of violence are at greatest risk of receiving it, not pre-schoolers. Of the over 75,000 youths who visited emergency rooms for gun-related injuries from 2006 to 2014, 86.2…

In the early days of industrial capitalism there were no protections for workers, and industrialists took their profits with little heed to anyone else. Following the growth of the labour movement, the establishment of trade unions and the founding of the welfare state in the first half of the 20th century, corporations in decades after World War II embraced a more open, stakeholder capitalism, where profits were shared between employees, managers and shareholders. This led to a flourishing middle class as workers and communities benefited from the success of the corporations of which they…

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s actions as a teenager are at the center of a public firestorm. “I’ve been really troubled by the excuse offered by too many that this was a high school incident, and ‘boys will be boys,’ said Sen. Chris Coons during testimony by Christine Blasey Ford before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27. But Trump surrogates such as Kellyanne Conway have dismissed his actions are merely those of a "teenager.” The adult Kavanaugh cannot be held accountable, such logic goes, for these alleged youthful indiscretions. What exactly do we mean by teenage behavior…

Though sexual assault and dating violence in the academic and cultural world focuses most heavily on men, among teens there are more Asia Argento's than Twitter recognizes. In recent findings, 5.8 percent of boys and 4.2 percent of girls said they had experienced dating violence in the past year. The good news is that dating violence among teens has declined overall, from 6 percent of teens reporting dating violence in 2003 down to 5 percent in 2013. The researchers analyzed data from three B.C. Adolescent Health Surveys involving 35,900 youth in grade 7 to 12 who were in dating…

Three new species of fossil primates have been named, residents of San Diego County from a time when southern California was filled with lush tropical forests. The three previously unknown omomyoid primates lived 42 million to 46 million years ago. The researchers named these new species Ekwiiyemakius walshi, Gunnelltarsius randalli and Brontomomys cerutti.  Enamel is the hardest tissue in the body. And as a result, teeth are more likely to be preserved in the fossil record. Studying the teeth, researchers concluded the three new genera, which represent the bulk of the undescribed Friars…

As lifestyles in the UK have become more stressful and pressurized, people have started to look at alternative ways to live. Some are now seeking out more of a community feel to their home lives, exploring the option of joining an “intentional community”. Intentional communities come in many different shapes and sizes. They are, simply put, groups of people who choose to share their lives and live communally with others. This is more than just, say, people who share a block of flats, but on the other hand they have moved on from being stereotypical hippie communes. Intentional communities…

Social media is king. It can run pizza chain founders out of their companies, it can be used by anti-science activists to mobilize well-meaning science advocates against other science advocates, but what it can't do is change human nature. And human nature says people will visit those nearby. Even when people have well-connected social networks state lines, they are still most frequently interacting with people who are geographically close. Except in Los Angeles. Apparently everyone is looking for a reason to leave Los Angeles.  The conclusion comes from an analysis of 51 million…